Development of the PETAL Laser Facility and its Diagnostic Tools

Abstract

The PETAL system (PETawatt Aquitaine Laser) is a high-energy short-pulse laser, currently in an advanced construction phase, to be combined with the French Mega-Joule Laser (LMJ). In a first operational phase (beginning in 2015 and 2016) PETAL will provide 1 kJ in 1 ps and will be coupled to the first four LMJ quads. The ultimate performance goal to reach 7PW (3.5 kJ with 0.5 ps pulses). Once in operation, LMJ and PETAL will form a unique facility in Europe for High Energy Density Physics (HEDP). PETAL is aiming at providing secondary sources of particles and radiation to diagnose the HED plasmas generated by the LMJ beams. It also will be used to create HED states by short-pulse heating of matter. Petal+ is an auxiliary project addressed to design and build diagnostics for experiments with PETAL. Within this project, three types of diagnostics are planned: a proton spectrometer, an electronspectrometer and a large-range X-ray spectrometer.

X-ray phase-contrast imaging for laser-induced shock waves

“…XPCI has already made an important contribution to the fields of biology and medicine [6][7][8][9], but laser-driven XPCI could also be applied to studies of warm dense matter (WDM), laboratory astrophysics and inertial confinement fusion (ICF). Large-scale laser facil-ities such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [10] and Laser MegaJoule (LMJ) [11] enable us to study matter in extreme conditions and both have dedicated beamlines for target probing: the Advanced Radiographic Capability (ARC) [12] and the PETawatt Aquitaine Laser (PETAL) [13]. With the increased precision and detail available through XPCI, the development of XPCI lines on these facilities could open up new possibilities in diagnostic imaging.…”

“…Facility (NIF) [10] and Laser Mégajoule (LMJ) [11] enable us to study matter in extreme conditions and both have dedicated beamlines for target probing: the Advanced Radiographic Capability (ARC) [12] and the PETawatt Aquitaine Laser (PETAL) [13]. With the increased precision and detail available through XPCI, the development of XPCI lines on these facilities could open up new possibilities in diagnostic imaging.…”