在激光聚变需求牵引下，高功率固体激光技术走过了30多年的发展历程。在世界范围内，美、日、法、中、英、俄等国先后建造了20多台大型装置，输出能量初期仅百焦耳级，后来增大到数万焦耳，固体激光技术得到长足发展。近几年来，几个大国都在建造巨型激光装置，如美国和法国正分别建造国家点火装置NIF和兆焦耳激光器LMJ，我国在研制神光-Ⅲ激光装置，俄国也在计划建造Iskra-6激光装置。这一代激光装置的研制不但在科学技术上提出了许多新需求，从而把激光科学技术发展推向新的历史阶段，而且就其规模、投入、周期和风险而言，是前所未有的大光学科学工程。从工程科学的角度去研究如何才能建造出性能优良和效费比高的巨型激光装置是需要回答的具有挑战性的新课题。

High-power solid-state laser technology development has been conducted so far for more than thirty years for application to inertial confinement fusion. Over twenty laser facilities have been built with the output energy of about a hundred Joules at the beginning up to severa tens of thousands Joules later in USA, Japan, France, China, Bratain, Russia and so on. In recent years, a few powers have been working very hard to build huge facilities, such as the NIF in USA, the LMJ in France, the SG—Ⅲ in China and the Iskra-6 in Russia. Numerous advanced technologies have to be developed to support the construction of the facilities. However, the most challenging task is to study, from the point of view of engineering science, how to build such huge facilities featured with high cost, high technical risk, and a long time period, in a cost-effective manner.