Overview of laser systems for the Orion facility at the AWE

Abstract

The commissioning of the Orion laser facility at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in the UK has recently been completed. The facility is a twelve beam Nd:glass-based system for studying high energy density physics. It consists of ten frequency-tripled beam-lines operating with nanosecond pulses, synchronized with two beam-lines with subpicosecond pulses, each capable of delivering 500 J to target. One of the short pulse beams has the option of frequency doubling, at reduced aperture, to yield up to 100 J at 527 nm in a subpicosecond pulse with high temporal contrast. An extensive array of target diagnostics is provided. This article describes the laser design and commissioning and presents key performance data of the facility's laser systems.

Numerical investigation and potential tunability scheme on and stimulated pair creation from vacuum using high intensity laser beams

“…As the electric field strength E * increases, it reaches its peak near E cµ = γ L ×10 17 V m −1 ∼ 10 22 V m −1 the created π + π − pairs are estimated to reach up to 10 2 pairs with a threshold multiphoton order of n 0 = 10 4 . These investigations confirm the tunability (selectivity) between the e + e − pair creation and the π + π − pairs and their experimental observation during ultra-high intensity laser pulses with high energy electron beam such as proposed by ELI [36,52] , ORION [37,38] and IZEST -ICAN project [53] . The use of the new high energy, high average power, high efficiency (up to 30%) fiber CPA laser (ICAN project) and the physical decay of the pions to muons allow to propose an alternative to accelerators high quality muon source installed in future laser facilities, with important applications such as the study of muonic molecules formation in relatively high quantity for muon catalyzed fusion [42,43] and the neutrino factory [44] due to muon decay to neutrino.…”

High energy density physics at the Atomic Weapons Establishment

“…Furthermore, such a laser system would be an ideal staging platform to larger lasers for collaboratively carrying out those experiments that do require megajoule class energies. This concept for the Orion laser facility combining short and long pulse lasers [7] was endorsed, and building work commenced in 2006. . HEDP experiments at AWE followed dual tracks (albeit with a very limited number of experiments in the green underground testing (UGT) line) until nuclear testing stopped.…”

Development of high damage threshold laser-machined apodizers and gain filters for laser applications

“…Email: prambo@sandia.gov However, there are situations where such filters and apodizers are desired in a higher fluence region of the beam. Such is the case in some high energy petawatt lasers which employ optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) for a first stage amplifier and traditional Nd:Phosphate Glass for subsequent amplifiers [6,8] . Rather than sending the OPCPA output directly into subsequent Nd:Phosphate Glass amplifiers, it is advisable to apodize and/or amplitude filter after the nonlinear gain process, allowing one to have better defined parameters at that position.…”