High Power Laser Science and Engineering, (2016), Vol. 4, e21, 8 pages.
© The Author(s) 2016. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
doi:10.1017/hpl.2016.20
Laser performance of the SG-III laser facility
Wanguo Zheng
1,2
, Xiaofeng Wei
1
, Qihua Zhu
1,2
, Feng Jing
1
, Dongxia Hu
1,2
, Jingqin Su
1,2
,
Kuixing Zheng
1
, Xiaodong Yuan
1
, Hai Zhou
1
, Wanjun Dai
1
, Wei Zhou
1
, Fang Wang
1
, Dangpeng Xu
1
,
Xudong Xie
1
, Bin Feng
1
, Zhitao Peng
1
, Liangfu Guo
1
, Yuanbin Chen
1
, Xiongjun Zhang
1
, Lanqin Liu
1
,
Donghui Lin
1
, Zhao Dang
1
, Yong Xiang
1
, and Xuewei Deng
1,2
1
Laser Fusion Research Center, China Academy of Engineering Physics, P.O. Box 919-988, MianYang 621900, China
2
IFSA Collaborative Innovation Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
(Received 4 April 2016; revised 2 June 2016; accepted 14 June 2016)
Abstract
SG-III laser facility is now the largest laser driver for inertial confinement fusion research in China. The whole laser
facility can deliver 180 kJ energy and 60 TW power ultraviolet laser onto target, with power balance better than 10%.
We review the laser system and introduce the SG-III laser performance here.
Keywords: inertial confinement fusion; laser driver; SG-III
1. Introduction
As one of the major approaches to achieve controllable
fusion ignition, laser driven inertial confinement fusion (ICF)
has been widely studied around the world
[1–4]
. As essential
drivers, several huge laser facilities have been constructed,
such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the United
States
[5]
, the laser megajoule (LMJ) in France
[6]
and the
SG-III laser facility in China
[7]
. These laser facilities are
designed to provide timely tailored ultraviolet laser driving
during as long as tens of nanoseconds, producing x-ray
radiation in a hohlraum which then compresses DT pellet
to achieve fusion ignition
[4]
. In order to deliver more
energy onto the target, the lasers have to be converted to
ultraviolet, and wavelength tuning is required to avoid energy
loss. Typically, fusion level laser facilities are designed to
output MJ level laser energy. NIF has 192 laser beamlines,
providing 1.8 MJ laser energy. LMJ also has 1.8 MJ
designed output capability with 240 beamlines. The SG-III
laser facility is the largest laser driver in China at present,
which is designed to deliver 180 kJ ultraviolet laser energy
onto the target, exploring the key physics processes and the
technologies of ICF, while not to achieve fusion ignition.
The engineering construction of the SG-III laser facility
started in 2007, lasting nearly 8 years, and met its goal of
generating 180 kJ/3 ns/351 nm laser energy in 2015. The
Correspondence to: X. Deng, Laser Fusion Research Center, China
Academy of Engineering Physics, P.O. Box 919-988, MianYang 621900,
China. Email: xwdeng@caep.cn
whole laser facility was designed and collectively integrated
by Laser Fusion Research Center in China Academy of
Engineering Physics. In the past 8 years, this largest
laser facility in China has involved nearly 200 institutes,
universities and companies as vendor, and several thousands
of scientists, engineers, technicians and skilled laborers have
worked for it. The first shot in SG-III with its full output
capability was conducted in 14 September 2015, in which
shot the output 351 nm ultraviolet laser energy reached
181.3 kJ, exceeding its designed point for the first time.
This meaningful shot indicated that China had finished the
engineering construction of the 100 kJ level ICF research
platform and the SG-III laser facility established its world
second output capability currently.
In this paper, we briefly review the laser system and then
introduce the SG-III laser performance in detail. After
precise adjustment, the whole laser facility has met all
the design requirements, such as the 180 kJ energy and
60 TW power ultraviolet output capability, 30 µm pointing
precision, 10 ps synchronization level (root mean square
(RMS) value), 10% power balance level (RMS value), pulse
shaping capability and so on, which form solid foundations
for deeper ICF researches in China.
2. System configuration
The SG-III laser facility possesses 48 laser beams, which
are divided into six bundles with 4 × 2 beam arrangement
1