LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
The Advanced Radiographic Capability (ARC) currently under development for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) will provide short (1-50 picoseconds) ultra high power (>1 Petawatt) laser pulses used for a variety of diagnostic purposes on NIF ranging from a high energy x-ray pulse source for backlighter imaging to an experimental platform for fast-ignition. A single NIF Quad (4 beams) is being upgraded to support experimentally driven, autonomous operations using either ARC or existing NIF pulses. Using its own seed oscillator, ARC generates short, wide bandwidth pulses that propagate down the existing NIF beamlines for amplification before being redirected through large aperture gratings that perform chirped pulse compression, generating a series of high-intensity pulses within the target chamber. This significant effort to integrate the ARC adds 40% additional control points to the existing NIF Quad and will be deployed in several phases over the coming year. This talk discusses some new unique ARC software controls used for short pulse operation on NIF and integration techniques being used to expedite deployment of this new diagnostic.
LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is operated by the Integrated Computer Control System in an object-oriented, CORBA-based system distributed among over 1800 front-end processors, embedded controllers and supervisory servers. At present, NIF operates 24x7 and conducts a variety of fusion, high energy density and basic science experiments. During the past year, the control system was expanded to include a variety of new diagnostic systems, and programmable laser beam shaping and parallel shot automation for more efficient shot operations. The system is also currently being expanded with an Advanced Radiographic Capability, which will provide short (<10 picoseconds) ultra-high power (>1 Petawatt) laser pulses that will be used for a variety of diagnostic and experimental capabilities. Additional tools have been developed to support experimental planning, experimental setup, facility configuration and post shot analysis, using open-source software, commercial workflow tools, database and messaging technologies. This talk discusses the current status of the control and information systems to support a wide variety of experiments being conducted on NIF including ignition experiments.
LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
GA, San Diego, California, USA
Kentech Instruments Ltd., Wallingford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
X-ray cameras on inertial confinement fusion facilities can determine the implosion velocity and symmetry of NIF targets by recording the emission of X-rays from the target gated as a function of time. To capture targets that undergo ignition and thermonuclear burn, however, cameras with less than 10 picosecond shutter times are needed. A Collaboration between LLNL, General Atomics and Kentech Instruments has resulted in the design and construction of an X-ray camera which converts an X-ray image to an electron image, which is stretched, and then coupled to a conventional shuttered electron camera to meet this criteria. This talk discusses target diagnostic instrumentation and software used to control the DIXI diagnostic and seamlessly integrate it into the National Ignition Facility (NIF) Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS).
