The OMEGA Target-Positioning System

LLE Review, Volume 71 145 System Overview Historically, several different styles of target positioners have been developed and deployed at LLE. The initial target positioner on the OMEGA 24-beam system used a 16-target carousel, which was located inside the experimental target chamber. This approach required that the entire target chamber be vented to load the target carousel; it further constrained the experimental operations by limiting target selection to one of the 16 on the carousel. This last constraint often limited the flexibility of the experimental program to change the target parameters during the shot sequence based on the results from the initial shots in the sequence. In addition, this carousel positioner did not allow rotational alignment of the target, which is required for flat-target experiments.