R. Boni

A self-calibrating, multichannel streak camera for inertial confinement fusion applications

Self-calibrating, multichannel UV streak cameras have been designed, and six units have been deployed on the OMEGA laser system. These instruments acquire 12 channels simultaneously on a low-noise, charge-coupled-device camera in single-shot operation. The instruments can discern temporal features out to a bandwidth of 11 GHz, and the peak signal-to-noise ratio in each channel is 200:1. The unique feature of this system is the self-calibration ability built into it. The geometric distortions, flat field, and sweep speed of each channel can be measured and adjusted on a routine basis. By maintaining a strick regime of weekly calibrations, accurate power-balance measurements on the OMEGA laser can be obtained. These cameras represent a cost-effective solution for power balancing the OMEGA laser system.

Neutron-induced background in charge-coupled device detectors

The inertial confinement fusion (ICF) community must become more cognizant of the neutron-induced background levels in charge-coupled device (CCD) detectors that are replacing film as the recording medium in many ICF diagnostics. This background degrades the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the recorded signals and for the highest-yield shots comprises a substantial fraction of the pixel’s full well capacity. CCD detectors located anywhere in the OMEGA Target Bay are precluded from recording high precision signals (SNR>30) for deuterium–tritium neutron yields greater than 1013. CCDs make excellent calibrated neutron detectors. The average CCD background level is proportional to the neutron yield, and we have measured a linear response over four decades. The spectrum of deposited energy per pixel is heavily weighted to low energies, <50 keV, with a few isolated saturated pixels. Most of the background recorded by the CCDs is due to secondary radiation produced by interactions of the primary neutrons with all...

Neutron temporal diagnostic for high-yield deuterium-tritium cryogenic implosions on OMEGA.

A next-generation neutron temporal diagnostic (NTD) capable of recording high-quality data for the highest anticipated yield cryogenic deuterium-tritium (DT) implosion experiments was recently installed at the Omega Laser Facility. A high-quality measurement of the neutron production width is required to determine the hot-spot pressure achieved in inertial confinement fusion experiments-a key metric in assessing the quality of these implosions. The design of this NTD is based on a fast-rise-time plastic scintillator, which converts the neutron kinetic energy to 350- to 450-nm-wavelength light. The light from the scintillator inside the nose-cone assembly is relayed ∼16 m to a streak camera in a well-shielded location. An ∼200× reduction in neutron background was observed during the first high-yield DT cryogenic implosions compared to the current NTD installation on OMEGA. An impulse response of ∼40 ± 10 ps was measured in a dedicated experiment using hard x-rays from a planar target irradiated with a 10-ps short pulse from the OMEGA EP laser. The measured instrument response includes contributions from the scintillator rise time, optical relay, and streak camera.

Measurements of electron density profiles using an angular filter refractometera)

A novel diagnostic technique, angular filter refractometry (AFR), has been developed to characterize high-density, long-scale-length plasmas relevant to high-energy-density physics experiments. AFR measures plasma densities up to 1021 cm−3 with a 263-nm probe laser and is used to study the plasma expansion from CH foil and spherical targets that are irradiated with ∼9 kJ of ultraviolet (351-nm) laser energy in a 2-ns pulse. The data elucidate the temporal evolution of the plasma profile for the CH planar targets and the dependence of the plasma profile on target radius for CH spheres.

A reflective optical transport system for ultraviolet Thomson scattering from electron plasma waves on OMEGA

A reflective optical transport system has been designed for the OMEGA Thomson-scattering diagnostic. A Schwarzschild objective that uses two concentric spherical mirrors coupled to a Pfund objective provides diffraction-limited imaging across all reflected wavelengths. This enables the operator to perform Thomson-scattering measurements of ultraviolet (0.263 μm) light scattered from electron plasma waves.

The streak camera development program at LLE

The Diagnostic Development Group at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics has endeavored to build a stand-alone, remotely operated streak camera with comprehensive auto-focus and self-calibration capability. Designated as the Rochester Optical Streak System (ROSS), it is a generic streak camera platform, capable of accepting a variety of streak tubes. The system performance is limited by the installed tubes electron optics, not by any camera subsystem. Moreover, the ROSS camera can be photometrically calibrated.

Optical diagnostic suite (schlieren, interferometry, and grid image refractometry) on OMEGA EP using a 10-ps, 263-nm probe beam.

A 10-ps, 263-nm (4ω) laser is being built to probe plasmas produced on the OMEGA EP [J. H. Kelly, L. J. Waxer, V. Bagnoud, I. A. Begishev, J. Bromage, B. E. Kruschwitz, T. E. Kessler, S. J. Loucks, D. N. Maywar, R. L. McCrory et al., J. Phys. IV France 133, 75-80 (2006)]. A suite of optical diagnostics (schlieren, interferometry, and grid image refractometry) has been designed to diagnose and characterize a wide variety of plasmas. Light scattered by the probe beam is collected by an f/4 catadioptric telescope and a transport system is designed to image with a near-diffraction-limited resolution (~1 - μm full width at half maximum) over a 5-mm field of view to a diagnostic table. The transport system provides a contrast greater than 1 : 10(4) with respect to all wavelengths outside of the 263 ± 2 nm measurement range.

Absolute calibration of the OMEGA streaked optical pyrometer for temperature measurements of compressed materials

Experiments in high-energy-density physics often use optical pyrometry to determine temperatures of dynamically compressed materials. In combination with simultaneous shock-velocity and optical-reflectivity measurements using velocity interferometry, these experiments provide accurate equation-of-state data at extreme pressures (P > 1 Mbar) and temperatures (T > 0.5 eV). This paper reports on the absolute calibration of the streaked optical pyrometer (SOP) at the Omega Laser Facility. The wavelength-dependent system response was determined by measuring the optical emission from a National Institute of Standards and Technology-traceable tungsten-filament lamp through various narrowband (40-nm-wide) filters. The integrated signal over the SOPs ∼250-nm operating range is then related to that of a blackbody radiator using the calibrated response. We present a simple closed-form equation for the brightness temperature as a function of streak-camera signal derived from this calibration. Error estimates indicate that brightness temperature can be inferred to a precision of <5%.

Optical and x-ray streak camera gain measurements

Measurements of streak camera gain as the number of CCD (charge-coupled-device) electrons recorded per single-electron events hitting the streak tube phosphor are presented. The CCD is fiber optically coupled to the streak tube output; there is no image intensifier in the system. The gain is measured from the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the recorded photoelectrons. This technique allows us to verify that the photoelectron SNR follows Poisson statistics and to establish the linear dynamic range. Superpixel histograms of sparse streak records are also used to generate the pulse-height distribution (PHD) for recording single-electron events and corroborate the gain measurement. The noise factor and the number distribution of secondary electrons emitted per absorbed x ray from Au, KBr, and CsI photocathodes are derived from the PHD’s recorded with an x-ray streak camera.

A pulse-front-tilt–compensated streaked optical spectrometer with high throughput and picosecond time resolution

A high-throughput, broadband optical spectrometer coupled to the Rochester optical streak system equipped with a Photonis P820 streak tube was designed to record time-resolved spectra with 1-ps time resolution. Spectral resolution of 0.8 nm is achieved over a wavelength coverage range of 480 to 580 nm, using a 300-groove/mm diffraction grating in conjunction with a pair of 225-mm-focal-length doublets operating at an f/2.9 aperture. Overall pulse-front tilt across the beam diameter generated by the diffraction grating is reduced by preferentially delaying discrete segments of the collimated input beam using a 34-element reflective echelon optic. The introduced delay temporally aligns the beam segments and the net pulse-front tilt is limited to the accumulation across an individual sub-element. The resulting spectrometer design balances resolving power and pulse-front tilt while maintaining high throughput.