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A single-shot measuring apparatus with optical limiting for temporal pulse contrast of kJ-class petawatt lasers in the nanosecond range is proposed. A temporal linear filter comprising an electro-optical switch, a polarizer, a temporal nonlinear filter composed of cascaded SHG crystals, and a dichromatic mirror are, respectively, used as an optical limiting apparatus for contrast measurement of nanosecond and picosecond pulses to improve dynamic range and temporal resolution. The apparatus has been applied to pulse contrast measurements at the SG-II petawatt facility, achieving a high dynamic range of 10^10 and a fast time resolution of 107 ps in the 350 ns range. This technique can also be universally applied to the limiting of the main pulse of varying pulse widths to diagnose pre-pulses during generation and transmission.

The performance of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is sensitive to the operating temperature, and the design and operation of battery thermal management systems reply on accurate information of LIBs temperature. This study proposes a data-driven neural network (NN) model for estimating the temperature of a LIB module. Only one temperature measurement is needed for the battery module, which can assure a low cost. The method has been tested for battery modules consisting of both prismatic and cylindrical batteries. Results show that the root mean square error (RMSE) of temperature is less than 0.77 °C regardless of the different operating conditions, temperature, or heat dissipation conditions.

The development of a battery management algorithm is highly dependent on high-quality battery operation data, especially the data in extreme conditions such as low temperatures. The data in faults are also essential for failure and safety management research. This study developed a battery big data platform to realize vehicle operation, energy interaction and data management. First, we developed an electric vehicle with vehicle navigation and position detection and designed an environmental cabin that allows the vehicle to operate autonomously. Second, charging and heating systems based on wireless energy transfer were developed and equipped on the vehicle to investigate optimal charging and heating methods of the batteries in the vehicle. Third, the data transmission network was designed, a real-time monitoring interface was developed, and the self-developed battery management system was used to measure, collect, upload, and store battery operation data in real time. Finally, experimental validation was performed on the platform. Results demonstrate the efficiency and reliability of the platform. Battery state of charge estimation is used as an example to illustrate the availability of battery operation data.

We study the feasibility of measuring pulse duration in the far field in high-energy petawatt lasers using single-shot autocorrelation. This single-shot autocorrelation technique makes use of parametric upconversion in media with randomly oriented ferroelectric domains, which supports transverse second-harmonic generation with two counter-propagating fundamental beams. We show that this technique possesses a large time window, capable of measuring pulses with temporal duration ranging from a sub-picosecond to tens of picoseconds. We test the performance of this technique in the presence of multipulse structures, intensity modulations in the near field, and spatial-temporal coupling in fundamental beams. We also investigate the influence of beam pointing discrepancy on the measurement. Our study can serve as a preliminary experiment for robustly characterizing pulse duration in high-energy petawatt lasers.

Temporal characterization is important to diagnose and measure a petawatt (PW) class laser. We obtained the V curve of the pulse width versus the grating position using pulse width measurement with a mirror image configuration. The temporal range for pulse width was 18 ps with a resolution of 0.05 ps. We measured the pulse contrast between the −60  ps and −6  ps PW class laser within a single shot in the Shen Guang II facility. We measured the pulse contrast between the −91  ps and −60  ps PW class laser after expanding the temporal range. The temporal range was 70 ps, with a dynamic range of eight orders of magnitude.

The noncritically phase-matched (NCPM) fourth-harmonic generation (FHG) with partially deuterated dihydrogen phosphate (KD*P) crystal at an Nd:glass laser radiation wavelength of 1053.1 nm has been confirmed. NCPM FHG has been achieved in 70% and 65% deuterated KD*P crystal at the temperature of 17.7°C and 29.3°C, respectively. The angular acceptance of 70% and 65% deuterated KD*P crystals fixed at their NCPM temperature were measured, which were 53 and 55 mrad, respectively. The application of the NCPM FHG in a high-power laser facility for inertial confinement fusion is also discussed. Based on the theoretical analysis, the NCPM KD*P can be placed after the focus lens; thus, the laser-induced damage of a fused-silica lens at ultraviolet can be avoided.

In order to obtain the intensity distribution of a 351 nm focal spot and smoothing by spectral dispersion (SSD) focal plane profile of a SGII-upgraded facility, a type of off-axis imaging system with three spherical mirrors, suitable for a finite distance source point to be imaged near the diffraction limit has been designed. The quality factor of the image system is 1.6 times of the diffraction limit tested by a 1053 nm point source. Because of the absence of a 351 nm point source, we can use a Collins diffraction imaging integral with respect to λ=351  nm, corresponding to a quality factor that is 3.8 times the diffraction limit at 351 nm. The calibration results show that at least the range of ±10  mrad of view field angle and ±50  mm along the axial direction around the optimum object distance can be satisfied with near diffraction limited image that is consistent with the design value. Using this image system, the No. 2 beam of the SGII-upgraded facility has been tested. The test result of the focal spot of final optics assembly (FOA) at 351 nm indicates that about 80% of energy is encompassed in 14.1 times the diffraction limit, while the output energy of the No. 2 beam is 908 J at 1053 nm. According to convolution theorem, the true value of a 351 nm focal spot of FOA is about 12 times the diffraction limit because of the influence of the quality factor. Further experimental studies indicate that the RMS value along the smoothing direction is less than 15.98% in the SSD spot test experiment. Computer simulations show that the quality factor of the image system used in the experiment has almost no effect on the SSD focal spot test. The image system can remarkably distort the SSD focal spot distribution under the circumstance of the quality factor 15 times worse than the diffraction limit. The distorted image shows a steep slope in the contour of the SSD focal spot along the smoothing direction that otherwise has a relatively flat top region around the focal spot center.

At the Shen Guang II (SGII) Petawatt Laser Facility, measurements of large-energy, single-shot laser pulses sometimes feature asymmetric autocorrelation signals, causing uncertainty in the measurement of compressed pulses. This study presents a method for defining and describing the asymmetry of autocorrelation signals. We discuss two sources of asymmetry: the nonuniform distribution of the near field excited by a beam, and the rotation of autocorrelator arms from the cylinder lens. The pulsewidth of an asymmetric autocorrelation signal is shorter than its real width. After updating the autocorrelator, the single-shot autocorrelator for the SGII petawatt laser exhibits a measurement uncertainty of below 12.3%. Recommendations on reducing asymmetry in large-energy, single-shot autocorrelation are discussed.

AbstractWe report on the design and first results from experiments looking at the formation of radiative shocks on the Shenguang-II (SG-II) laser at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics in China. Laser-heating of a two-layer CH/CH–Br foil drives a $\sim 40$km/s shock inside a gas cell filled with argon at an initial pressure of 1 bar. The use of gas-cell targets with large (several millimetres) lateral and axial extent allows the shock to propagate freely without any wall interactions, and permits a large field of view to image single and colliding counter-propagating shocks with time-resolved, point-projection X-ray backlighting ($\sim 20$μm source size, 4.3 keV photon energy). Single shocks were imaged up to 100 ns after the onset of the laser drive, allowing to probe the growth of spatial nonuniformities in the shock apex. These results are compared with experiments looking at counter-propagating shocks, showing a symmetric drive that leads to a collision and stagnation from $\sim 40$ns onward. We present a preliminary comparison with numerical simulations with the radiation hydrodynamics code ARWEN, which provides expected plasma parameters for the design of future experiments in this facility.

Phase mismatching for third-harmonic generation (THG) in barium metaborate (BBO) crystal is investigated in detail. Upon using BBO crystal in the Type I (oo?e) scheme, in the two independent planes (principal section of the crystal and the plane normal to principal section), when the input second-harmonic beam deviates from the expected direction, phase mismatching occurs and the angle deviation produces different effects on the conversion efficiency. We numerically simulate these two cases of phase mismatching and identify the relation between the conversion efficiency and the deviation angle in the air. The computational results indicate that the phase matching tolerance in the principal section is 0.2° (in the air), while the phase matching tolerance in the plane normal to principal section is 4.5° (in the air). After conducting a lab experiment, the results agree perfectly with the computational results, indicating that the deviation angle in the principal section has a greater effect on the conversion efficiency.

A novel method for obtaining a single shot multi-point high dynamic range pulse contrast measurement is presented. We use Dammann gratings to generate multiple beamlets by division of amplitude on ultrashort laser pulses. The analysis results show that this method can achieve high dynamic range in pulse contrast measurement on a single shot by using photomultiplier tube (PMT) detectors and the long working distances to minimize cross talk between channels. Some distortion of pulse shape is also analyzed detailedly with the Dammann grating and its compensation grating, which may degrade the pulse contrast measurement in some degree by pulse stretching and spectrum clipping.

Accurately and efficiently predicting the fundamental-frequency temporal shape of broadband long-pulsed lasers is very important in research on the properties of high-power laser amplifiers. In this study, we first propose that analytic electric polarization in the temporal domain is applied to broadband long-pulsed pulse amplification. We first verify the accuracy of this algorithm in the dozens of picoseconds range and the results are consistent with Miro software. Then we simulate the broadband long-pulsed amplification. The simulation results indicate that the front edge of the output pulse is more enlarged than the end edge owing to saturation and that the gain narrowing induces severe amplitude modulation. Analytic electric polarization in the temporal domain is effective and precise for investigating the broadband pulse amplification in the time scale from dozens of picoseconds to nanoseconds, and the computation time can be decreased by at least 4 orders of magnitude.

A second harmonic generation system with two type II KDP crystals in quadrature is optimized for the nanosecond chirp pulse. The acceptance bandwidth of this optimizing scheme is close to 10 nm by using two crystals with slightly opposite angular detuning from phase matching and the conversion efficiency can reach 70% for top-hat chirp pulse at ~2 GW/cm2 in theory. The preliminary experimental results are obtained on the 9th beam of Shen Guang II SGII laser system, and the performance of optimization is partially verified.