What we do
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A few facts about the Orion laser facility.
Shaping the future of plasma physics. The Orion laser facility is used to conduct research into high energy density physics phenomena.
An overview or AWE’s Technical outreach programme and our collaboration with academia, industry and our international partners.
AWE plays a crucial role in national nuclear security to assist in protecting the UK from threats.
The Broad-Band X-ray Diffraction Diagnostic (BBXRD) is a type of Laue camera used to record X-ray diffraction data from single-crystal samples of different materials.
X-ray Film spectrometers use crystals to disperse X-rays in a variety of geometries to give the X-ray spectrum relevant to an experiment.
The Orion Thermoluminescent Detector (TLD) measures bremsstrahlung radiation dose levels generated in laser-plasma interactions, within an energy range of ~0.1 – 20MeV.
The Transmission Grating Spectrometer (TGS) is used to measure absolute spectral intensity from targets in the 10-100Å (0.12 – 1.2keV) spectral range with 10% accuracy.
The Gated X-ray Detector (GXD) uses Micro-Channel Plate (MCP) technology to provide 2D spatially resolved, time gated images of X-ray emission.
The Dante measures the absolute X-ray energy emitted from laser-target interactions to enable calculations of the target temperature to be achieved.