Development of a compact magnetic spectrometer for use at the OMEGA Laser Facility and the National Ignition Facility.

Abstract

Measurement of proton spectra is an important diagnostic for a variety of high energy density physics experiments. Current diagnostics are either not designed to capture the spectrum of low-energy protons or are unsuitable for high debris experiments. To bridge the gap, a new CR-39 based compact magnetic spectrometer (MagSpec) has been developed to measure proton spectra in the 1-20MeV energy range, with a particular focus on the low-energy (1-6MeV) spectrum, for use in experiments at the OMEGA Laser Facility and the National Ignition Facility (NIF). In the MagSpec diagnostic, protons of different energies are dispersed as they pass through a magnetic field before impinging on a differentially filtered CR-39 surface, resulting in a spatial distribution of CR-39 tracks that corresponds to the energy spectrum. In this paper, we discuss details of the design and implementation of MagSpec on the NIF and OMEGA.