Vulcan 10 PW Interaction Areas

The 10 petawatt (PW) beamline will be delivered to two experimental areas. In the first area, the 10 PW beam will be directed to the existing Target Area Petawatt (TAP) to be combined with the existing 1 PW beam from Vulcan in a 1+10 PW configuration.

With an extension to the South end of the existing experimental area, it will be configurable as either a dual beam 1+10 PW facility using new 90° off-axis parabolic mirrors, or as a long focal length electron acceleration area using a 90° off-axis, f=15 parabolic mirror, with a specially designed forward electron dump. The use of 90° off-axis parabolic mirrors on all beamlines maximises the available diagnostics space within the experimental chamber whilst the reconfiguration of the chamber shielding enables better use of both existing and new diagnostics ports.

This facility will be expected to be firing full energy shots to target in late 2014, two years after completion of the building.

The second experimental facility, to be commissioned in 2016 is the new High Intensity Area (HIA), which will operate at 10²³ Wcm^-2 intensities using an on-axis, f=0.8 parabolic mirror in a newly designed experimental chamber (see concept layout below).

The 3.5m diameter, 2.5m high fully accessible chamber has 6 pneumatically locking access doors, each with a selection of standardised diagnostics ports directed to target chamber centre (TCC). A removable domed roof further increases the number of available diagnostic ports for external diagnostics.

Discussions on experimental, diagnostics and target configurations are currently taking place with external facility users in order to optimise the experimental facility and chamber designs.

For more information, please contact Rob Clarke.