Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

High energy-density experiments for ATLAS

Conference ·
OSTI ID:346881
; ;  [1]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States); and others
Atlas is a high-energy pulsed-power facility under development at Los Alamos National Laboratory to drive high-energy density experiments. It is optimized for materials properties and hydrodynamics experiments under extreme conditions. The system is designed to implode heavy liner loads with a peak current of 30--40 MA delivered in {approximately}4 {micro}s. Atlas will be operational in near the end of 2000 and is designed to provide 100 shots per year. The Atlas capacitor bank consists of an array 240-kV Marx modules storing a total of 24-MJ. For many applications the Atlas liner will be a nominal 50-gram-aluminum cylinder with {approximately}5-cm radius and 4-cm length. Implosion velocities up to 20 km/s are predicted. Using composite inner layers and a variety of interior target designs, a wide variety of experiments in {approximately}cm{sup 3} volumes may be performed. These include shock compression experiments up to {approximately}2 TPa (20 Mbar), quasi-adiabatic compressions up to 6-fold compression and nonlinear and turbulent regimes over multi-cm propagation lengths, experiments with dense, strongly-coupled plasmas, studies of materials response at very high strains and strain rates, and materials studies in ultrahigh magnetic fields (above 10{sup 3} T). Experimental configurations, associated physics issues, and diagnostic strategies will be discussed. Near-term proof-of-principle experiments on the smaller Pegasus II capacitor bank will be identified.
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-36
OSTI ID:
346881
Report Number(s):
CONF-980601--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English