Detecting fiducials affected by trombone delay in ARC and the main laser alignment at the National Ignition Facility

Abdul A. S. Awwal; Erlan S. Bliss; Victoria Miller Kamm; Richard R. Leach Jr.; Randy Roberts; Michael C. Rushford; Roger Lowe-Webb; Karl Wilhelmsen

doi:10.1117/12.2190065

9 September 2015 Detecting fiducials affected by trombone delay in ARC and the main laser alignment at the National Ignition Facility

Abdul A. S. Awwal, Erlan S. Bliss, Victoria Miller Kamm, Richard R. Leach Jr., Randy Roberts, Michael C. Rushford, Roger Lowe-Webb, Karl Wilhelmsen

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9598, Optics and Photonics for Information Processing IX; 959812 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2190065
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2015, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Four of the 192 beams of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) are currently being diverted into the Advanced Radiographic Capability (ARC) system to generate a sequence of short (1-50 picoseconds) 1053 nm laser pulses. When focused onto high Z wires in vacuum, these pulses create high energy x-ray pulses capable of penetrating the dense, imploding fusion fuel plasma during ignition scale experiments. The transmitted x-rays imaged with x-ray diagnostics can create movie radiographs that are expected to provide unprecedented insight into the implosion dynamics. The resulting images will serve as a diagnostic for tuning the experimental parameters towards successful fusion reactions. Beam delays introduced into the ARC pulses via independent, free-space optical trombones create the desired x-ray image sequence, or movie. However, these beam delays cause optical distortion of various alignment fiducials viewed by alignment sensors in the NIF and ARC beamlines. This work describes how the position of circular alignment fiducials is estimated in the presence of distortion.

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Abdul A. S. Awwal, Erlan S. Bliss, Victoria Miller Kamm, Richard R. Leach Jr., Randy Roberts, Michael C. Rushford, Roger Lowe-Webb, and Karl Wilhelmsen "Detecting fiducials affected by trombone delay in ARC and the main laser alignment at the National Ignition Facility", Proc. SPIE 9598, Optics and Photonics for Information Processing IX, 959812 (9 September 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2190065

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