The Matter in Extreme Conditions end-station of LCL

The Matter in Extreme Conditions (MEC) end-station of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is a LaserNetUS node at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, CA. This is the only LaserNetUS node that is located at the end of an X-FEL facility, making it uniquely capable of performing warm dense matter, dense plasmas or relativistic plasma experiments while probing with a highly calibrated X-ray source. We present the experimental capabilities of this end-station, which include two different high-power laser systems; a Ti:Sapphire short-pulse laser system (1J, 40fs, 5Hz), and a Nd:Glass long-pulse laser (100J, 5-35ns, 1 shot per 7 minutes). Experiments performed here can be characterized via an extensive suite of facility-owned diagnostics including X-ray imagers, multiple X-ray Thomson Scattering spectrometers, a high-resolution X-ray inelastic scattering spectrometer, electron spectrometer, Thomson Parabola, VISAR, and a short-pulse optical imaging probe. Additionally, we will discuss the performance of these laser system, including the various diagnostic configurations, demonstrating the flexibility of the overall LaserNetUS node and its ability to tackle various scientific cases.