OMEGA EP: Status and Use Planning

The OMEGA EP Laser Facility will be completed in April 2008, 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 ultimately produce 10-ns, 6.5-kJ-energy ultraviolet pulses directed into the EP target chamber. Two of the beamlines will also operate as high-energy petawatt (HEPW) lasers, with up to 2.6 kJ each in 10-ps IR pulses. The HEPW beams can be injected into either the EP chamber or the existing OMEGA target chamber for integrated experiments. This talk will describe the project's status and progress in developing of the OMEGA EP Use Plan, including the results of the first two OMEGA EP Use Planning Workshops. 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 Cooperative Agreement DE-FC52-92SF19460.