Quick Shot

Synchronizing the arrival times of OMEGA’s 60 beams on target has been improved to <5-ps rms by placing a scattering sphere at target chamber center. When illuminated with a directional beam of blue light, the 1-mm sphere scatters uniformly into 4π steradians, and the scattered light is used to co-time each beam. Personnel developing this technique include Bill Donaldson and Joe Katz.