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To quickly check the beam alignment. The camera: TT in needs to be opened. Use T1 mirror to point the beam to the center of TT in imager.
Figure 1. The time tool beam path is labeled in purple. The beam is split 10% (1mJ) from MPA 2 out. The T1 mirror can be adjusted to point the beam to the center of the camera imager: TT in. The route is along the wall of MPA2 box, across the stretcher box, elevating from 3.5" to 5.5" in height by the periscope (red circle), getting around the big compressor, through TT-shutter, and elevating from 5.5" to 28" to the second floor of the time tool/compressor/delay box( red area). The second floor contains delay switches, compressor, manual delay stage. Then a periscope sends the beam down to the first floor, which contains a remote delay stage and final pointing mirrors to send the beam to the YAG stage inside the vacuum chamber.
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There are various configurations. The most common two are so-called HP compressed and LP MPA2 bypassed.
- HP compressed: in this configuration, the main beam
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- passes through the
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- entire MPA, the telescope, and the compressor. Nothing is bypassed. The full energy is 1.5J after MPA2, 1J on the target, 40 fs pulse duration, and 1e19 W/cm2 intensity. In this case, the time tool configuration setup should be full-length as shown in
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- Fig. 2 (a). First, on the 2nd floor, the beam passes (1) all the bounce mirrors, (2) the time tool compressor (3) the manual delay. Check and move the stage to the yellow mark: HP compressed. Fig 2 (b), on the 1st floor, check camera TT out and use the last mirror on the 2nd floor to adjust.
Figure 2. (a) HP compressed configuration: in the 2nd floor, the beam passes (1) all the bounce mirrors, (2) time tool compressor (3) the manual delay. Move the stage to the yellow mark: HP compressed. (b) in the 1st floor, use camera TT out to check