Shock Physics

The fist-and-eye logo represents a significant piece of the work done by the Shock Physics and Recording Team - providing fast diagnostics for highly dynamic situations. Many of us are involved in shock-physics related experiments throughout the Laboratory and at other sites. We've been part of pulse-power shots at Pegasus and Ancho Canyon, in Albuquerque and Russia; gas-gun experiments at Los Alamos, Livermore, and elsewhere; and explosive-driven events at local firing points, at PHERMEX, and underground in Nevada. The major diagnostics techniques we've developed are: fast infrared pyrometry for surface temperature, fiber-optic pins for material motion, microwave interferometry for plasma blowoff, fast-pulsed X-ray sources for dynamic imaging, and gamma-ray detection schemes for nuclear energy release. We're in the midst of developing a gas-Cerenkov reaction history diagnostic for laser-driven fusion experiments and are starting up a VISAR effort to support the Physics Division thrust in proton radiography. We're doing control system hardware for Atlas and beam diagnostics for DARHT.

But that's only part of it, and the breadth of our vastly different research backgrounds is reflected in our work. How about a new, more efficient protocol for digital TV? A new design concept for miniature gas turbines? Algorithms for EMP analysis? On the technical side, we can provide expertise for: fast data recording, fiber-optic design and fabrication, pulse-power system design and testing, CAD and CAM, miniature Marx banks, LIDAR, microwaves, alpha neutron and gamma detectors, imaging systems, radio-frequency diagnostics, and remote sensing technology. We also run the P-22 Bus: a complete recording station on wheels. On the analytic side, our collective background includes: image and signal analysis, fluid dynamics and shock modeling, tomography, information theory, ray tracing, plasma kinetics, electromagnetic waves, turbulence, and radiative transport.

Did we mention the new effort to measure the universal gravitational constant? Check out the write-up below.

High Energy Liner Experiment

In August, 1996, an explosive driven high energy liner experiment was performed in Sarov, Russia. It was a collaboration between scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the All Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics. A liner experiment consists of a hollow cylinder that is forced to implode by passing a very high current through it. Experiments requiring a high velocity impactor can be done at the center of the imploding cylinder. Impact velocities greater than 6 km/second were achieved. Energy to drive the liner was from an explosive driven flux compression disk generator attached to the liner assembly. More than 25-Megajoules of electrical energy was put into the liner.

A series of slides describing this project. (PDF-780Kb).

Gravitational Constant Measurement

A redetermination of the Newtonian gravitational constant is currently being performed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory at a remote site on Frijoles Mesa. Two preliminary determinations have already been performed employing low-Q torsion pendulum's and using the time-of-swing method, originally described by Eotvos. Recently, K. Kuroda has predicted that such determinations have an upward bias inversely proportional to the oscillation Q, and our results support this conjecture. The ongoing measurement will employ more sophisticated torsion fibers and test masses.

A schematic of the apparatus used in this determination (PDF-18Kb).