Proton radiography has become an important tool for predicting the performance of stockpiled nuclear weapons. Current proton radiography experiments at LANSCE are confined to relatively small targets on the order of centimeters in size because of the low beam energy. LANL scientists have made radiographs with 12 and 24 GeV protons produced by the accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory. These energies are in the range required for hydrotest radiography. The design of a facility for hydrotest radiography requires knowledge of the cross sections for producing high-energy particles in the forward direction, which are incorporated into the Monte Carlo simulation used in designing the beam and detectors. There are few existing measurements of neutron production cross sections for proton-nuclei interactions in the 50 GeV range, and almost no data exist for forward neutron production, especially for heavy target nuclei. Thus the data from the MIPP EMCAL and HCAL, for which our group was responsible, are critical to proton radiography. Since neutrons and photons cannot be focused by magnets, they cause a background “fog” on the images. This problem can be minimized by careful design of the focusing system and detectors. The purpose of our research was to measure forward production of …

Dense plasma diagnostics, soft x-ray laser interferometry, converging plasmas.