Radial smoothing for improving laser-beam irradiance uniformity.

Laser-beam irradiation uniformity is a key issue in inertial confinement fusion research. We propose a radial smoothing (RS) approach in which the speckle in a focal plane is smoothed by the radial redistribution through fast focal zooming. This focal zooming is generated by introducing the periodical spherical wavefront modulation to the laser beam, based on an optical Kerr medium and its pump laser with the temporal profile of a Gaussian pulse train. The utilization of RS significantly improves the laser-beam uniformity without obvious impact on the performance of the high-power laser system.