Diagnostic development for the Atlas pulsed power facility

Abstract

Atlas will be a 23 MJ capacitor bank capable of delivering greater than 30 MA to a liner target with a nominal 4 microsecond risetime. We describe here our ongoing diagnostic development efforts in this extreme Atlas environment. Included in this discussion are development efforts in X-ray radiography, shock physics diagnostics, and temperature and pressure diagnostics. X-ray radiography is the key diagnostic for visualizing the shock-induced fluid flows characteristic of the proposed Atlas experiments. Due to the large area densities needed for Atlas targets, a number of radiographic systems are under investigation. Diagnostics that address shock physics issues on Atlas include VISAR (velocity interferometer for a surface of any reflector), shock breakout, optical pins, and dark-field shadowgraphy. Temperature diagnostics include infrared pyrometry. As pressure diagnostics we are developing probes based on the pressure dependence of the frequency of fluorescence lines from ruby and the Raman shift in diamond.