High Energy Density Physics (HEDP) Research Group
In order to understand laser-matter interactions in the high energy density conditions that are present in ultra-intense laser systems, scientists gain experimental data by striking a variety of engineered targets and examining the resulting radiation, fields, and particles that are generated in the reaction. Data is obtained using a network of specialized diagnostic devices and data storage systems. Large data sets are required in order to build reliable models of the ultra-intense regime.
The usability of current ultra-intense laser systems is limited by their low repetition rate. Typically, large-scale laser systems are only able to deliver several shots per day at most. One of the primary goals of the Scarlet laser is to reliably run experiments consisting of hundreds of shots per day. This will allow us to more accurately model high energy density systems and to truly understand just what happens in ultra-intense laser-matter interactions.
Our laser system was initially designed for a peak power of 40 TW. Our upgrade, designed to reach 400 TW and intensities of 10^21 W/cm^2, is now nearly complete and we look forward to our first experiments on Scarlet in early 2013.
Laser specifications:
400 TW System:
- 1021 W/cm2 intensity
- 400 TW peak power
- 800 nanometer wavelength
- 15 Joule per pulse
- 40 femtosecond pulse width
- 5 micron FWHM focal spot size
- 1 shot/minute repetition rate
- Greater than 1010:1 pulse contrast ratio
Laser Diagnostic devices:
- On-shot energy
- SPIDER Single Shot Pulse Width
- On-shot intensity spectrum
- Third-order Cross-Correlator for Pulse Contrast
- On-shot focal spot diagnostic
- Water-cell nanosecond pulse contrast
- Spatial mode cameras
- Spatial chirp diagnostic
Experimental Diagnostic devices:
- HOPG (Highly-Oriented Pyrolitic Graphite)
- X-ray diodes
- Imaging plates
- 1 TW probe laser for pre-plasma shadowgraphy
- Schlieren imaging
- Gamma-ray spectrometer
- Thompson parabola
- Neutron spectrometer
- Interferometer
- Single-hit x-ray spectrometer
- X-ray pinhole imaging camera
- K-alpha bent-crystal imaging spectrometer
Computational Capabilities (in-house):
- Six-node computer cluster with four 2.1 GHz AMD Opteron Processors per node (total of 48 cores/node) and 130 GB of RAM per node
- 10 TB RAID storage array
