Laser facilities
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High power laser facilities offer a relatively simple way of creating, in the laboratory, the conditions needed to conduct research into high energy density physics phenomena. AWE has hosted a succession of such lasers and the latest, Orion, is currently being commissioned at AWE Aldermaston.
Orion
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Orion has two sets of beamlines, referred to as the long-pulse and short-pulse beams. The 10 long-pulse beams each provide up to 500J of ultraviolet light in a pulse that is a nanosecond (ns) or so in duration, where a nanosecond is one billionth (10-9) of a second. The two short-pulse beams use chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) to produce 500J of infrared light in pulses that are 0.5 picoseconds (ps) long, or roughly 2000 times shorter than the pulse-length of the long-pulse beams.
High-tech laser components and systems at the very edge of current technological limits, including CPA, adaptive optics (AO) and metre-diameter gold-coated diffraction gratings, have been incorporated into the laser design. This specialised equipment is housed in three enormous cleanrooms, maintained under ‘operating theatre’ conditions in a building specially designed to isolate the equipment from vibration and contamination.
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Orion will support AWE’s science mission of maintaining confidence in the safety and operability of the stockpile in the present era, which follows the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
It is capable of creating conditions in the laboratory which replicate those which occur in an operating nuclear warhead. This will enable materials properties to be measured in a regime of high applicability to the weapon. Such measurements will help to bridge between interpretative and predictive computer codes by providing experimental data for benchmarking.
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Another key aspect of Orion's mission will be the provision of beam-time to the academic community. There is a significant overlap between the physical processes that occur in an exploding warhead and objects of more general scientific interest such as evolving stars, super-dense matter and high-temperature systems. Orion is designed to be configured to support an even wider field of scientific exploration including particle acceleration, X-ray laser research and the production of short-lived isotopes.
Academic access to Orion
Access to leading-edge laser facilities plays an important part in helping universities to attract the highest calibre researchers and scientists to the subject of Plasma Physics. This should create a pool of expertise that many future AWE scientists will be recruited and the vitality of the subject is very important to the sustainability of AWE's technical programmes. It is planned that up to 15% of beam-time will be used for collaborative experiments with our university partners.
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