We have built a high-speed velocimeter that has proven to be compact, simple to operate, and fairly inexpensive. This diagnostic is assembled using off-the-shelf components developed for the telecommunications industry. The main components are fiber lasers, high-bandwidth high-sample-rate digitizers, and fiber optic circulators. The laser is a 2W cw fiber laser operating at 1550nm. The digitizers have 8GHz bandwidth and can digitize four channels simultaneously at 20GS∕s. The maximum velocity of this system is ∼5000m∕s and is limited by the bandwidth of the electrical components. For most applications, the recorded beat frequency is analyzed using Fourier transform methods, which determine the time response of the final velocity time history. Using the Fourier transform method of analysis allows multiple velocities to be observed simultaneously. We have obtained high-quality data on many experiments such as explosively driven surfaces and gas gun assemblies.

At LLNL, we have been using heterodyne techniques for the past year and a half to measure velocities up to several kilometers-per-second on different types of experiments. We assembled this diagnostic, which we call the Heterodyne Velocimeter (HetV), using commercially available products developed for the communications industry. We use a 1550 nm fiber laser and single mode fibers to deliver light to and from the target. The return Doppler-shifted light is mixed with the original laser light to generate a beat frequency proportional to the velocity. At a velocity of 1000 m/s, the beat signal has a frequency of 1.29 GHz. We record the beat signals directly onto fast digitizers. The maximum velocity is limited by the bandwidth of the electronics and the sampling rate of the digitizers. The record length is limited by the amount of memory contained in the digitizers. This paper describes our approach to measuring velocities with this technique and presents recent data obtained with the HetV.

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