Dynamic Radiography

We explore physics under extreme conditions at the proton radiography (pRad) Facility and inertial confinement fusion (ICF) facilities. Ignition experiments at Mega-Joule/Tera-Watt laser facilities such as NIF will take the field of High Energy Density science into new frontiers, both in terms of Physics and diagnostic capabilities. In particular, understanding the nature and amount of mix caused by hydrodynamic instabilities in ICF targets is important from a fundamental Physics perspective as well as for optimizing target performance.

For the pRad Facility, advanced diagnostics are developed to study dynamic material damage. We have developed the ability to record high-resolution multiple images (a movie) of rapidly evolving dynamic phenomena down to the 100 ns time scale. In the present set-up pRAD can acquire ~30 images, with a temporal separation more than 300 ns, using an array of single-frame gated high-resolution CCD’s (charge-coupled device) and two lower resolution framing tube cameras for which they received the R&D 100 Award.