Basic Science User Programs at the Omega Laser Facility

The Omega Laser Facility at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics includes the 60-beam 30 kJ OMEGA Laser System and the four-beam high-energy, high-intensity OMEGA EP Laser System. The OMEGA EP short-pulse beam (up to two) or the tunable-wavelength long-pulse beam can also be transported to the OMEGA chamber for joint operations. The two lasers share over 100 facility-supported diagnostics and perform over 2000 highly diagnosed experiments annually. Three programs provide general user access for basic research, with nearly one-third of the total facility time granted through peer-reviewed proposal processes (the National Laser Users’ Facility and Laboratory Basic Science funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration, and LaserNetUS funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences). The user programs currently support the education and training of 80 graduate students from over 20 universities. This presentation will provide an overview of the basic science user programs and highlight user research in broad high-energy-density (HED) scientific areas including (but not limited to) laboratory astrophysics, high-pressure material properties and phase-transition dynamics relevant to planets and exoplanets, magnetized HED plasmas, equations of state, warm dense matter, relativistic laser–plasma interaction and intense beam physics, nuclear physics, and inertial fusion energy.