OMEGA EP: Status and Use Planning

The OMEGA EP Laser Facility will be completed in 2007, adjacent to the 60-beam, 30-kJ OMEGA Laser Facility at the University of Rochester. OMEGA EP will consist of four beamlines with NIF-like architecture. Each of the beams will produce 6.5 kJ in 10 ns pulses and will be directed into the OMEGA EP target chamber. Two of the beamlines will also operate as high-intensity, short-pulse lasers with 2.6 kJ each. They could be injected into either the OMEGA EP chamber or the existing OMEGA target chamber for integrated experiments. This talk will describe the OMEGA EP performance requirements, project status, and the development of the OMEGA EP Use Plan. This plan will describe the expected experiments, including resources required and opportunities for external user access. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Inertial Confinement Fusion under the Cooperative Agreement No. DE-FC52-92SF19460.