Ten-Inch Manipulator-Based Short-Lived Isotope Counting System for Nuclear Experiments on OMEGA and OMEGA-EP

Because they are capable of producing large numbers of energetic ions in a single burst, high power, short-pulse lasers provide a fresh opportunity for making nuclear measurements that would be difficult using a traditional accelerator. The Short-Lived Isotope Counting System (SLICS) has been developed to detect the 20 ms to 20 s half-life beta decays of reaction products formed as a result of light-ion reactions initiated by laser-ion acceleration or inertial confinement fusion (ICF). Recently, SLICS has been redesigned to fit inside a Ten-Inch Manipulator (TIM) for insertion into the OMEGA-60 and OMEGA-EP target chambers at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. For the first use of the new TIM-based SLICS diagnostic, target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) using the OMEGA-EP laser system was used to produce a pulse of ~ 10¹³ multiple MeV deuterons which struck a thin natural Li target film, creating ⁸Li via the ⁷Li(d,p)⁸Li reaction. A description the new design and preliminary results will be presented.