Kirkpatrick-Baez microscope for hard X-ray imaging of fast ignition experiments.

A Kirkpatrick-Baez X-ray microscope has been developed for use on the Titan laser facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Fast Ignition experiments. It was developed as a broadband alternative to narrow band Bragg crystal imagers for imaging Kα emission from tracer layers. A re-entrant design is employed which allows for alignment from outside the chamber. The mirrors are coated with Pt and operate at a grazing incident angle of 0.5° providing higher resolution than an equal brightness pinhole and sufficient bandwidth to image thermally shifted characteristic Kα emission from heated Cu tracer layers in Fast Ignition experiments. The superpolished substrates (<1 Å rms roughness) had a final visible wavelength roughness of 1.7 Å after coating, and exhibited a reflectivity corresponding to an X-ray wavelength roughness of 7 ± 1 Å. A unique feature of this design is that during experiments, the unfiltered direct signal along with the one-dimensional reflections are retained on the detector in order to enable a live indication of alignment and incident angle. The broad spectral window from 4 to 9 keV enables simultaneous observation of emission from several spectral regions of interest, which has been demonstrated to be particularly useful for cone-wire targets. An experimentally measured resolution of 15 µm has been obtained at the center of the field of view.

South pole bang-time diagnostic on the National Ignition Facility (invited).

The south pole bang-time diagnostic views National Ignition Facility (NIF) implosions through the lower Hohlraum laser entrance hole to measure the time of peak x-ray emission (peak compression) in indirect-drive implosions. Five chemical-vapor-deposition diamond photoconductive detectors with different filtrations and sensitivities record the time-varying x rays emitted by the target. Wavelength selecting highly oriented pyrolytic graphite crystal mirror monochromators increase the x-ray signal-to-background ratio by filtering for 11-keV emission. Diagnostic timing and the in situ temporal instrument response function are determined from laser impulse shots on the NIF. After signal deconvolution and background removal, the bang time is determined to 45-ps accuracy. The x-ray "yield" (mJ∕sr∕keV at 11 keV) is determined from the time integral of the corrected peak signal.

Limitation on prepulse level for cone-guided fast-ignition inertial confinement fusion.

The viability of fast-ignition (FI) inertial confinement fusion hinges on the efficient transfer of laser energy to the compressed fuel via multi-MeV electrons. Preformed plasma due to the laser prepulse strongly influences ultraintense laser plasma interactions and hot electron generation in the hollow cone of an FI target. We induced a prepulse and consequent preplasma in copper cone targets and measured the energy deposition zone of the main pulse by imaging the emitted K_{alpha} radiation. Simulation of the radiation hydrodynamics of the preplasma and particle in cell modeling of the main pulse interaction agree well with the measured deposition zones and provide an insight into the energy deposition mechanism and electron distribution. It was demonstrated that a under these conditions a 100 mJ prepulse eliminates the forward going component of approximately 2-4 MeV electrons.

Effect of reentrant cone geometry on energy transport in intense laser-plasma interactions.

The energy transport in cone-guided low- Z targets has been studied for laser intensities on target of 2.5x10(20) W cm(-2). Extreme ultraviolet (XUV) imaging and transverse optical shadowgraphy of the rear surfaces of slab and cone-slab targets show that the cone geometry strongly influences the observed transport patterns. The XUV intensity showed an average spot size of 65+/-10 microm for slab targets. The cone slabs showed a reduced spot size of 44+/-10 microm. The shadowgraphy for the aforementioned shots demonstrate the same behavior. The transverse size of the expansion pattern was 357+/-32 microm for the slabs and reduced to 210+/-30 microm. A transport model was constructed which showed that the change in transport pattern is due to suppression of refluxing electrons in the material surrounding the cone.

Diagnostics for fast ignition science (invited).

The ignition concept for electron fast ignition inertial confinement fusion requires sufficient energy be transferred from an approximately 20 ps laser pulse to the compressed fuel via approximately MeV electrons. We have assembled a suite of diagnostics to characterize such transfer, simultaneously fielding absolutely calibrated extreme ultraviolet multilayer imagers at 68 and 256 eV; spherically bent crystal imagers at 4.5 and 8 keV; multi-keV crystal spectrometers; MeV x-ray bremmstrahlung, electron and proton spectrometers (along the same line of sight), and a picosecond optical probe interferometer. These diagnostics allow careful measurement of energy transport and deposition during and following the laser-plasma interactions at extremely high intensities in both planar and conical targets. Together with accurate on-shot laser focal spot and prepulse characterization, these measurements are yielding new insights into energy coupling and are providing critical data for validating numerical particle-in-cell (PIC) and hybrid PIC simulation codes in an area crucial for fast ignition and other applications. Novel aspects of these diagnostics and how they are combined to extract quantitative data on ultrahigh intensity laser-plasma interactions are discussed.

Use of GafChromic film to diagnose laser generated proton beams.

A calibration of three types of GafChromic radiochromic film (HS, MD-55, and HD-810) was carried out on the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory's 76 in. cyclotron at UC Davis over doses ranging from 0.001 to 15 kGy. The film was digitized with a scanning microdensitometer with which it was scanned twice with two different filters to increase the film's effective dynamic range. We demonstrate how this calibrated film can be used to measure the spectrum and total energy of a laser generated proton beam. This technique was applied to an experiment on the 10 J, 100 fs Callisto laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The resulting proton spectrum was compared to that obtained by simultaneous measurement of Ti nuclear activation; the two methods give the same proton beam slope temperature and agree in number of protons to within 27%.

Measurements of energy transport patterns in solid density laser plasma interactions at intensities of 5x10(20) W cm-2.

Kalpha x-ray emission, extreme ultraviolet emission, and plasma imaging techniques have been used to diagnose energy transport patterns in copper foils ranging in thickness from 5 to 75 microm for intensities up to 5x10(20) W cm-2. The Kalpha emission and shadowgrams both indicate a larger divergence angle than that reported in the literature at lower intensities [R. Stephens, Phys. Rev. E 69, 066414 (2004)]. Foils 5 microm thick show triple-humped plasma expansion patterns at the back and front surfaces. Hybrid code modeling shows that this can be attributed to an increase in the mean energy of the fast electrons emitted at large radii, which only have sufficient energy to form a plasma in such thin targets.