Pulsed power system for the PHELIX kilojoule/petawatt-laser at GSI Darmstadt

The high power laser PHELIX is currently installed at the heavy ion accelerator facility GSI-Darmstadt. It will deliver several kJ energy in pulses of 1 to 10 ns length, with variable pulse shaping and up to one petawatt power in 500 fs, using chirped pulse amplification. In combination with the high power ion beam from the SIS synchrotron at GSI, which is expected to deliver pulses of up to 1 kJ beam energy in the near future, a variety of unique experiments will become possible with the PHELIX laser. These include basic research of ion beam interaction with hot, dense laser produced plasmas, investigation of intense laser generated particle beams and their acceleration, X-ray backlighting of ion beam generated plasmas at solid state density, and others. This research will be of relevance to equation-of-state (EOS) physics, astrophysics, atomic and plasma physics, and in the field of inertial confinement fusion. The setup of the pulsed power system for the 315 mm glass main amplifiers and Faraday rotators follows closely the design of the Nova and Phebus lasers. The main capacitor bank will store an energy of up to 4 MJ and is switched with ignitrons. The discharge circuit, grounding scheme, and dump system are discussed and the structure of the control system, monitoring and data acquisition is described.