Design and fabrication of gas cell targets for laboratory astrophysics experiments on the Orion high-power laser facility

Abstract

This paper describes the design and fabrication of a range of 'gas cell' microtargets produced by the Target Fabrication Group in the Central Laser Facility (CLF) for academic access experiments on the Orion laser facility at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE). The experiments were carried out by an academic consortium led by Imperial College London. The underlying target methodology was an evolution of a range of targets used for experiments on radiative shocks and involved the fabrication of a precision machined cell containing a number of apertures for interaction foils or diagnostic windows. The interior of the cell was gas-filled before laser irradiation. This paper details the assembly processes, thin film requirements and micro-machining processes needed to produce the targets. Also described is the implementation of a gas-fill system to produce targets that are filled to a pressure of 0.1-1 bar. The paper discusses the challenges that are posed by such a target.

Target Design for XUV Probing of Radiative Shock Experiments

“…see ref. [27,28,38,40]. The targets in the experiments presented here are of the first type (shock tube), with a cross-section of 400 × 4 μ and a length of 6 mm which, for a typical shock velocity of 50 , allows to probe the shock up to ~ 100 ns.…”

Review of HPLSE special issue on target fabrication

“…Surface characterization of ICF capsule by AFMbased profilometer [7] 15. Design and fabrication of gas cell targets for laboratory astrophysics experiments on the Orion highpower laser facility [9] 16. REACH compliant epoxides used in the synthesis of Fe(III)-based aerogel monoliths for target fabrication [17] 17.…”

“…Submissions for the special issue covered the invited topics and also branched out into broader areas and capabilities. Papers described research on: techniques for the production of targets for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] , micro-assembly [3,8,9] , liquid targets [10] , systems for delivery of targets at high repetition rates [5,11,12] , fundamental target fabrication processes [2,4,[13][14][15][16] , low density materials [15,17,18] and metrology methods [7,18,19] . In addition, there were three important review papers [1,5,12] that give an excellent snapshot of the current capabilities across the world.…”

“…Assembly techniques for the manufacture of complex assemblies for ICF experiments on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [8] and ShenGuang III [3] were presented with emphasis on robotic assembly as a route to increase accuracy and throughput. In addition the delivery of targets to large facilities such as the Orion laser is presented with focus on gas-filled targets [9] .…”

High-extraction-efficiency, nanosecond bidirectional ring amplifier with twin pulses

“…Laser amplifiers have been widely used in the fields of engineering applications and scientific research, such as laser material processing [1] , plasma physics [2,3] , laboratory astrophysics [4,5] , inertial confinement fusion (ICF) [6][7][8][9] and other important technologies. In the development of highenergy and high-power laser systems, the master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) was used to realize power amplification with a high beam quality.…”