Abstract

The improved quality of laser beams for inertial fusion experiments is achieved through phase conversion using distributed phase plates (DPPs) and smoothing by spectral dispersion (SSD).^1-2 The general concept of SSD is spectral dispersion of light onto a phase plate so that each element of a DPP is irradiated by a different frequency. The relative phase between beamlets from different DPP elements then varies in time according to the frequency differences; the larger the bandwidth, the more rapidly the structure changes and the more rapidly the time averaged intensity is smoothed.

© 1990 Optical Society of America