Overview of the General Atomics LAboratory for Developing Rep-rated Instrumentation and Experiments with Lasers (GALADRIEL)

The backbone of the GALADRIEL facility at General Atomics is a commercial ~1 TW (<20 fs, 25mJ, 800nm) Ti:Sapph laser system capable of up to 10Hz operation. GALADRIEL will serve as a platform for advancing technologies capable of diagnosing the rep-rated (~0.1-10Hz) High-Energy-Density (HED) environments created in existing and next-generation HED science facilities. Rep-rated diagnostic concepts for measuring optical and x-ray photons as well as particles (e-, p, etc.) are presently under development.  Design and implementation of automated control systems also necessitate development in mass data analysis, machine learning, and feedback systems to leverage the rep-rated operation of these diagnostics.  In the future, the GALADRIEL facility will develop systems and alignment protocols to accurately deliver complex targets (i.e. not tape drives) to target chamber center for use at large-scale, rep-rated HED facilities. However, the first experiments on GALADRIEL, planned for early 2022, will generate laser wakefields by driving a laser into a gas jet to produce relativistic electron beams. Current diagnostic development efforts are focused on implementing a rep-ratable electron spectrometer and a wavefront diagnostic to characterize the plasma density at 10Hz.