OMEGA 60 Beam Becomes Fully Operational

1996:

Beginning in FY96, OMEGA began to provide shots for indirect drive and other high-energy-density-physics experiments from the national laboratories (LLNL, LANL, and SNL). Two weeks of experiments were performed in June 1996 to demonstrate the utility of OMEGA for indirect drive. This campaign involved researchers from LLNL, LANL, and LLE. The main objective of these experiments was to verify the ability of the OMEGA system to perform hohlraum experiments, to reproduce results obtained with the Nova laser, and to demonstrate new capabilities not available on other lasers. All of these objectives were met.

These experiments took advantage of key capabilities added to the upgraded OMEGA including a new pulse-shaping system and a ten-inch diagnostic manipulator (TIM). The experiments were the first on OMEGA to simultaneously use three framing cameras. Most of these experiments were carried out using 1-ns square pulses, with 500 J per beam delivered to the target.

(OMEGA 60 Target Shot)