Large aperture high-power laser drivers usually focus the high power laser beams in 2×2 quads to the target chamber center in order to increase the light intensity on the target plane. The large aperture wedged focus lenses are the core components in the focus system of quadruplets of beams, and it is thought possible to use four two-dimensional off-axis wedged focus lenses as four sub-lenses to make up a larger aperture wedged focus lens in form to focus the four beams. Given that the large aperture two-dimensional off-axis wedged focus lenses are processed and used difficultly, the wedged focus lenses are divided into three categories: the two-dimensional off-axis wedged focus lenses, the onedimensional off-axis wedged focus lenses, and the non-off-axis wedged focus lenses. On the basis of the three modes of the wedged focus lenses and the corresponding specific incidence angles of each sub-beam, the three focus schemes for the 2×2 beam array are put forward to comparatively research the light intensity distribution on the target plane. Research results show that from a perspective of the coherence among the four sub-beams, the phase factors of each sub-beam respectively introducing by the three focus systems with the two-dimensional off-axis, one-dimensional off-axis, and non-off-axis wedged focus lenses are asymmetric, asymmetric and symmetric inside each sub-beam, and symmetric, asymmetric and symmetric among the four sub-beams. Therefore, the wave front consistency of the four sub-beams decreases in the order of the focus systems with the non-off-axis, two-dimensional off-axis, and one-dimensional off-axis wedged focus lenses. The focus schemes with the non-off-axis wedged focus lenses for 2×2 beam array can get the narrowest main-lobe, the strongest peak-value intensity, the highest energy concentration ratio on the target plane, followed by the one-dimensional off-axis and two-dimensional off-axis wedged focus lenses. The off-axis mode of the wedged focus lenses not only increases the complexity in the course of processing and using, but also increases the main-lobe size, decreases the peak-value intensity and the energy concentration ratio, which obtains a weaker focusing characteristics than that of the non-off-axis mode of the wedged focus lenses. Research results can provide an important reference for the design of the focus system in the target area of high-power laser drivers.

The high-power laser beam in the final optics assembly of high-power laser facilities is often modulated by contamination particles, which may cause local high light intensity, thereby increasing the filamentary damage probability for optical components. To study the general design basis for a final optics assembly to decrease the risk of filamentary damage, different-sized contamination particles deposited on a component surface are simulated to modulate a 351-nm laser beam based on the optical transmission theory, and the corresponding simulation results are analyzed statistically in terms of the propagation characteristic and the light field intensity distribution of the modulated laser beam. The statistical results show that component thickness and distance between components can to some extent be optimized to reduce the appearance of local high light intensity, and the general design basis of component thickness and arrangement are given for different control levels of particle sizes. Moreover, the statistical results can also predict the laser beam quality approximately under the existing optics design and environmental cleanliness. The optimized design for final optics assembly based on environmental cleanliness level is useful to prolong the lifetime of optics and enhance the output power of high-power laser facilities.

Based on the optical transmission theory, the reason why front-surface particle contamination may induce the original damage of thin optical components is considered, and a damage mechanism is put forward: The localized thermal deformation of an optical element induced by the thermal effect of particle contamination together with the shading effect of it can disturb the laser beams. Simulated results show that for a high power laser, the localized thermal deformation of thin optical components, which disturbs the laser beam, is an important cause to produce strong light intensity modulations. The surface shape, phase delay, and thermal diffusion length of a localized thermal deformation are constantly changing with the increase of laser pulse shot number, so the highest light intensity modulation will be produced at different positions in the thickness direction or the xy direction on the rear-surface of an optical element. This not only can easily induce some damages on the rear-surface of the optical element, but also cause the interior damages scattered in the thickness direction.

Microstructure optical fibers with flat-top fundamental mode are first proposed by introducing a low-index inner core into the core of index-guiding microstructure optical fibers. The design guidelines and characteristics of beam-shaping microstructure optical fibers are demonstrated. The interrelationships of inner-core index with laser wavelength, air hole diameter and size of inner core are investigated. The influence of the relative size of inner core on the spatial profile of the fundamental mode is demonstrated. Moreover, sensitivity of the flat-top fundamental mode profile from the slight change of the optimum inner-core index value is studied. Starting from these results we deduce that it is possible to fabricate beam-shaping microstructure fibers with nowadays technique.