In an experiment performed on the Shenguang-III prototype laser facility, collective Thomson scattering (TS) is used to study the spatial growth of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in a gas-filled hohlraum by detecting the SBS-driven ion acoustic wave. High-quality time-resolved SBS and TS spectra are obtained simultaneously in the experiment, and these are analyzed by a steady-state code based on the ray-tracing model. The analysis indicates that ion–ion collisions may play an important role in suppressing SBS growth in the Au plasma; as a result, the SBS excited in the filled gas region is dominant. In the early phase of the laser pulse, SBS originates primarily from the high-density plasma at the edges of the interaction beam channel, which is piled up by the heating of the interaction beam. Throughout the duration of the laser pulse, the presence of the TS probe beam might mitigate SBS by perturbing the density distribution around the region overlapping with the interaction beam.

The first laser–plasma interaction experiment using lasers of eight beams grouped into one octad has been conducted on the Shenguang Octopus facility. Although each beam intensity is below its individual threshold for stimulated Brillouin backscattering (SBS), collective behaviors are excited to enhance the octad SBS. In particular, when two-color/cone lasers with wavelength separation 0.3 nm are used, the backward SBS reflectivities show novel behavior in which beams of longer wavelength achieve higher SBS gain. This property of SBS can be attributed to the rotation of the wave vectors of common ion acoustic waves due to the competition of detunings between geometrical angle and wavelength separation. This mechanism is confirmed using massively parallel supercomputer simulations with the three-dimensional laser–plasma interaction code LAP3D.

A recently proposed octahedral spherical hohlraum with six laser entrance holes (LEHs) is an attractive concept for an upgraded laser facility aiming at a predictable and reproducible fusion gain with a simple target design. However, with the laser energies available at present, LEH size can be a critical issue. Owing to the uncertainties in simulation results, the LEH size should be determined on the basis of experimental evidence. However, determination of LEH size of an ignition target at a small-scale laser facility poses difficulties. In this paper, we propose to use the prepulse of an ignition pulse to determine the LEH size for ignition-scale hohlraums via LEH closure behavior, and we present convincing evidence from multiple diagnostics at the SGIII facility with ignition-scale hohlraum, laser prepulse, and laser beam size. The LEH closure observed in our experiment is in agreement with data from the National Ignition Facility. The total LEH area of the octahedral hohlraum is found to be very close to that of a cylindrical hohlraum, thus successfully demonstrating the feasibility of the octahedral hohlraum in terms of laser energy, which is crucially important for sizing an ignition-scale octahedrally configured laser system. This work provides a novel way to determine the LEH size of an ignition target at a small-scale laser facility, and it can be applied to other hohlraum configurations for the indirect drive approach.

We report experimental research on laser plasma interaction (LPI) conducted in Shenguang laser facilities during the past ten years. The research generally consists of three phases: (1) developing platforms for LPI research in mm-scale plasma with limited drive energy, where both gasbag and gas-filled hohlraum targets are tested; (2) studying the effects of beam-smoothing techniques, such as continuous phase plate and polarization smoothing, on the suppression of LPI; and (3) exploring the factors affecting LPI in integrated implosion experiments, which include the laser intensity, gas-fill pressure, size of the laser-entrance hole, and interplay between different beam cones. Results obtained in each phase will be presented and discussed in detail.