Development of a Big Area BackLighter for high energy density experiments

A very large area (7.5 mm(2)) laser-driven x-ray backlighter, termed the Big Area BackLighter (BABL) has been developed for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to support high energy density experiments. The BABL provides an alternative to Pinhole-Apertured point-projection Backlighting (PABL) for a large field of view. This bypasses the challenges for PABL in the equatorial plane of the NIF target chamber where space is limited because of the unconverted laser light that threatens the diagnostic aperture, the backlighter foil, and the pinhole substrate. A transmission experiment using 132 kJ of NIF laser energy at a maximum intensity of 8.52 x 10(14) W/cm(2) illuminating the BABL demonstrated good conversion efficiency of >3.5% into K-shell emission producing similar to 4.6 kJ of high energy x rays, while yielding high contrast images with a highly uniform background that agree well with 2D simulated spectra and spatial profiles. (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.