The MIT HEDP Accelerator Facility for Diagnostic Development for OMEGA, Z, and the NIF

The student-run MIT HEDP Accelerator Facility uses a 125-keV ion accelerator, DT and DD neutron sources, and two x-ray sources for development and characterization of diagnostics for OMEGA, Z, and the NIF. The accelerator generates DD and D³He fusion products through the acceleration of D⁺ ions onto a ³He-doped Erbium-Deuteride target, with fusion product rates up to 10⁶ s⁻¹ routinely achieved. The DT and DD neutron sources generate up to 6´10⁸ and 1´10⁷ neutrons/s, respectively. One x-ray generator is a thick-target W source with a peak energy of 225 keV; the other uses Cu, Mo, or Ti tubes to generate x-rays with a maximum energy of 40 keV. Diagnostics developed and calibrated at this facility include CR-39-based mono-energetic particle radiography, charged-particle spectrometers, neutron detectors, and the particle Time-Of-Flight (pTOF) CVD-diamond-based bang time detector. This poster includes discussion about recent x-ray filter calibration experiments for use in new OMEGA temporally and spatially resolving x-ray diagnostics PXTD and XRIS, as well as development of precision Step-Range-Filter particle spectrometers for NIF and OMEGA, and analysis techniques for a new Z neutron spectrometer. This work was supported in part by the U.S. DOE, the MIT/NNSA CoE, LLE, SNL and LLNL.