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The Generation of Higher-order Laguerre-Gauss Optical Beams for High-precision Interferometry
Published on: August 12, 2013
The design of a line velocity interferometer for any reflector for inertial confinement experiments on the Z-machine
1Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, Livermore, California 94551, USA.
Abstract:
A line VISAR (Velocity Interferometer System for Any Reflector) has been designed and commissioned at the Sandia National Laboratory's Z-machine. The instrument consists of an F/2 collection system, beam transport, and an interferometer table that contains two Mach-Zehnder type interferometers and an eight channel Gated Optical Imaging (GOI) system. The VISAR probe laser operates at the 532 nm wavelength, and the GOI bandpass is 540-600 nm. The output of each interferometer is passed to an optical streak camera with four selectable sweep speeds. The system is designed with three interchangeable optics modules to select a full field of view of 1 mm, 2 mm, or 4 mm. The optical beam transport system connects the target image plane to the interferometers and the gated optical imagers. The target is integrated into a sacrificial final optics assembly that is integral to the transport beamline.

