Quick Shot

This target is used for x-ray Thomson-scattering measurements on OMEGA EP to measure the plasma properties of foam materials that are shocked by intense laser beams. The foam material and the parts of the container were manufactured by Schafer corporation located in Livermore CA, while the final assembly was performed by the LLE target fabrication department. The carbon-based foam (red) with a density of 350 mg/cm³ is encapsulated by a container (green) and by gold shields to protect it from preheat and to provide a definite and unperturbed measurement of the scattered x rays. The photograph shows the view from the drive beams. The surface of the red circular foam material shines through transparent layers of 50 µm of quartz and plastic. The x rays are generated on a nickel foil mounted on the top and propagate through a collimator to the foam material where they scatter by 90° to emerge through a small aperture behind the gold shield to the imaging x-ray Thomson spectrometer (IXTS). IXTS was developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory in collaboration with the University of Michigan.