Debris studies for high-repetition rate and high-power laser experiments at the Central Laser Facility

Many of the new large European facilities that are in the process of coming online will be operating at high power and high repetition rates. The ability to operate at high repetition rates is important for studies including secondary source generation and inertial confinement fusion research. In these interaction conditions, with solid targets, debris mitigation for the protection of beamline and diagnostic equipment becomes of the upmost importance. These facilities have the potential to take hundreds, if not thousands, of shots every day, creating massive volumes of debris and shot materials. In recent testing of the Central Laser Facility's High Accuracy Microtargetry Supply (HAMS) system on the mid-repetition rate Gemini facility (15 J, 40 fs, 1 shot every 20 seconds), diagnostics were deployed in order to specifically look at the debris emitted from targets designed for high repetition rate experiments. By using a high frame rate camera, it has been possible to observe and characterize some of the debris production, whilst also looking at target fratricide. Alongside these results from Gemini, we also present results of static debris measurements undertaken on the Vulcan Petawatt high energy, high power facility, where the cumulative effects of debris produced by high power laser experiments have been observed.