GALADRIEL: A facility for advancing engineering science relevant to rep-rated high energy density physics and inertial fusion energy experiments.

Many current and upcoming laser facilities used to study high-energy-density (HED) physics and inertial fusion energy (IFE) support operating at high rep-rates (HRRs) of ∼0.1-10 Hz, yet many diagnostics, target-fielding strategies, and data storage methods cannot support this pace of operation. Therefore, established experimental paradigms must change for the community to progress toward rep-rated operation.

A customizable data management framework for high-repetition-rate high-energy-density science.

The high-energy-density (HED) physics community is moving toward a new paradigm of high-repetition-rate (HRR) operation. To fully leverage the scientific power of HRR HED facilities, all of the components of each subsystem (laser, targetry, and performance diagnostics) must be connected and synchronized in a reliable and robust manner while the data acquired are tagged and archived in real time. To this end, GA has begun developing a generalized NoSQL-database framework, the MongoDB repository for information and archiving.

Investigating high speed phenomena in laser plasma interactions using dilation x-ray imager (invited).

The DIlation X-ray Imager (DIXI) is a new, high-speed x-ray framing camera at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) sensitive to x-rays in the range of ≈2-17 keV. DIXI uses the pulse-dilation technique to achieve a temporal resolution of less than 10 ps, a ≈10× improvement over conventional framing cameras currently employed on the NIF (≈100 ps resolution), and otherwise only attainable with 1D streaked imaging. The pulse-dilation technique utilizes a voltage ramp to impart a velocity gradient on the signal-bearing electrons.

Dilation x-ray imager a new∕faster gated x-ray imager for the NIF.

As the yield on implosion shots increases it is expected that the peak x-ray emission reduces to a duration with a FWHM as short as 20 ps for ∼7 × 10(18) neutron yield. However, the temporal resolution of currently used gated x-ray imagers on the NIF is 40-100 ps. We discuss the benefits of the higher temporal resolution for the NIF and present performance measurements for dilation x-ray imager, which utilizes pulse-dilation technology [T.

Patterns of electroconvection in the nematic liquid crystal N4.

Electroconvection using the liquid crystal N4 is studied as a function of two control parameters: the applied frequency and the applied voltage. As a function of voltage, there is a rich series of bifurcations that takes the system from stationary rolls to chaos. As a function of the frequency, the initial pattern changes from stationary oblique rolls at low frequencies to stationary normal rolls at higher frequencies.