Characterization of electromagnetic pulses via
arrays on ShenGuang-III laser facility laser
Ming Yang (杨 鸣)
1
, Tingshuai Li (李廷帅)
1
, Chuanke Wang (王传珂)
2
,
Jinwen Yang (杨进文)
1,2
, Weiming Yang (杨为明)
2
, Tao Yi (易 涛)
2,
*, Shenye Liu (刘慎业)
2
,
Shaoen Jiang (江少恩)
2
, and Yongkun Ding (丁永坤)
2
1
School of Energy Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China,
Chengdu 611731, China
2
Laser Fusion Research Center, Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang 621900, China
*Corresponding author: yitao2008@caep.cn
Received June 8, 2016; accepted August 12, 2016; posted online September 13, 2016
Intensive electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) can be generated from interaction of the ultra-intense lasers and solid
targets in inertial confinement fusion (ICF), which will detrimentally affect the data acquisition from some elec-
tric components. A diagnostic system for EMP measurement inside and outside the ShenGuang-III facility is
designed and fabricated in this study. The experimental results indicate that the peak magnitude of EMP
reaches up to 3210.7 kV/m and 6.02 T. The received signals depend most on the antenna and target types.
The half-hohlraum generates a more intensive EMP radiation than that from the other targets, and the large
planar and medium discone capture much stronger signals than the other antennas. In addition, the mechanisms
of EMP generation from different targets are discussed. The resulting conclusion are expected to provide the
experimental basis for further EMP shielding design.
OCIS codes: 140.3320, 140.3538, 350.5610.
doi: 10.3788/COL201614.101402.
Lasers are not only used to fabricate optical components
[1,2]
,
high-power lasers have been proposed to achieve inertial
confinement fusion (ICF)
[3]
, large laser facilities, includ-
ing the Titan and NIF
[4]
at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (LLNL) in America, LMJ
[5]
at CEA in
French, HiPER in the UK, and ShenGuang at the China
Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), and these la-
sers have been developed and established. Before ICF can
finally be realized, a number of fundamental issues and
engineering problems need to be solved. The extremely
significant electromagnetic radiation has a wide spec-
trum distribution (from MHz to 5 GHz) and a high-
density electric field (up to MV/m), which causes
malfunctions in various important diagnostics, such as
x ray streak cameras and oscilloscopes
[6]
. In order to ob-
tain accurate physical experimental results, it is essential
to investigate the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) genera-
tion characteristics and its formation mechanism.
To measure the EMP during the process of laser shoot-
ing, researchers at the LLNL have designed some B-dots
and D-dots to record the EMP signals in NIF, by which
they obtained the peak magnitude of the resulting E-field
signal is 167 kV/m and frequencies extending out to 5 GHz
and beyond
[7]
. Consoli et al.
[8]
presented a dielectric
electro-optic (EO) probe to measure the transient electric
field, and a maximum field of 261 kV/m was measured. To
interpret the mechanism of EMP generation further,
Marco et al.
[9]
exposited two distinct sources of EMP emis-
sion. Tidman et al.
[10]
proposed a simple circuit model to
describe the properties of the strong magnetic fields gen-
erated in laser-produced plasma. Dubois et al.
[11]
built a
model of the target charging and electric field in the case
of short-pulse interactions with solid targets, in which hot
electrons would escape from the target surface and then
created a potential drop Φ. They also found that the dis-
charge current was related to the laser energy, pulse
duration, and target size. Felber et al.
[12]
presented a model
of electron currents immersed in laser plasma to explain
the phenomenon of radio-frequency (RF) radiation and
so on.
On the basis of preliminary study
[13,14]
, we designed a
comprehensive EMP diagnostic system and conducted a
series of experiments to measure EMP signals at the
ShenGuang-III laser facility. Different targets were
adopted and several antennas were fabricated.
In this investigation. This experiment was carried out
at the ShenGuang-III facility, which was completed in
2015
[15]
and which can generate complex laser pulse
shapes
[16]
. The experimental sketch is shown in Fig. 1,
where 48 ultraviolet laser beams with dimensions of
400 mm × 400 mm, pulse widths of 1–10 ns, frequency-
tripled (3ω) laser energy of 180 kJ (3), and peak powers
up to 600 TW were concentrated on the targets. Antenna
arrays were implemented in and outside the chamber to
detect the signals, as shown in Fig.
2.
Since the EMPs have broad distributions in the fre-
quency domain, it is impossible to use one kind of antenna
to measure the signals covering the entire frequency do-
main. Therefore, different sizes of pulsed antennas are re-
quired for collecting EMP signals in different frequency
bands. Five different sets of antennas were designed as
field probes. We have antennas for the electric field and
COL 14(10), 101402(2016) CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS October 10, 2016
1671-7694/2016/101402(6) 101402-1 © 2016 Chinese Optics Letters