Rep-rated Technology Development at the General Atomics LAboratory for Developing Rep-rated Instrumentation and Experiments with Lasers (GALADRIEL)

The GALADRIEL facility is built around a commercial ~1 TW (<20 fs, 25mJ, 800nm) Ti:Sapph laser system capable of 10Hz operation and aims to address the needs of current and future High Energy Density (HED) facilities. Next-generation HED facilities utilize laser systems that are operable at rates of ~ 0.1 – 10 Hz, but often only field single-shot, or few-shot, diagnostics and target delivery systems. Because of this latter fact, significant development and testing of rep-rated diagnostics and target systems needs to occur for these facilities to achieve their true potential. GALADIREL will serve as a test platform for new rep-rated technologies, including the aforementioned diagnostics and target systems, as well as control feedback systems, data storage and management protocols, data processing, and machine learning techniques. Additionally, GALADRIEL is not intended only for use in the internal development of rep-rated technologies and processes at General Atomics, but as a user facility as well. Here we present updates, specs, and capabilities of the GALADRIEL facility as well as data from the initial commissioning experiments, which used the laser to generate ~MeV electrons via laser-wakefield characterized by a magnet-based spectrometer to measure the electron energy spectrum and a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor to measure areal electron density in the plasma.