Target diagnostics for the future AWE Orion laser facility

The Atomic Weapons Establishment has proposed building a new laser facility in the United Kingdom. This will use 10 ns-class beams in conjunction with two, subpicosecond, petawatt-class beams to access plasma conditions inaccessible to even the largest megajoule-class facilities. Diagnostic techniques for the long pulse regime are fairly mature, whereas techniques in the short pulse regime are still evolving. This article describes the development of a suite of target diagnostics to exploit the high temperature, high density plasma conditions that will be achievable on the Orion laser, and discusses some of the opportunities and problems that will be encountered in attempting to combine the two sets of techniques.