SCIENCE.AM is a project by Alistair McClymont to document ongoing research into art and science. To investigate the similarity between scientists and artists. The hypothesis is that both ultimately search for truth and both see beauty in that truth.

An x-ray image plate attached to the outside of the chamber.

The chamber is aluminium with a thinner aluminium circular window which appears lighter. You can see right through the layers of aluminium and the steel bolts holding it together.

This is part of a number of images i’m taking while scientists experiment with producing x-rays from a high energy laser interacting with a target (see the last post for an explanation of that).

Photo-sensitive paper placed in the laser beam to see how uniform/clean the beam is looking.

In the first image you can see a 10 micron thick laboratory grade piece of gold foil and an alignment wire with a laser hitting it. The piece of gold foil will be rotated to be in the path of the Vulcan laser beam to produce x-ray and neutron beams.

How it works:

Tomorrow I’ll be visiting the Central Laser Facility in Oxfordshire again to work with a group of scientists on the Vulcan laser.

The Vulcan laser is one of a small group of petawatt lasers, currently the most powerful in the world. Over the next month a group of scientists will be using the laser to generate X-rays by hitting a target and creating plasma. The X-rays themselves will be used to test new forms of imaging.

A wider shot of the Vulcan 20m3 interaction chamber. The large circle on the right is a 1 metre diameter mirror (reflects the infra red laser light). Through it you can see a door that the laser enters through. This only opens when the chamber is pumped down to a vacuum as the area beyond it is a 100m3 vacuum chamber containing the compression optics which compress the beam into a short pulse and finally focus it. More here: http://www.stfc.ac.uk/clf/44185.aspx

Inside the huge vacuum chamber of Vulcan, the most intense laser in the world

In the last few months I have followed a team working with the Gemini laser at the CLF. Dr Rajeev Pattathil led the team and kindly allowed me to take part in aspects of the experiment and also set up my own camera equipment in the target area. 

I’m getting ready for a vacuum test tomorrow at the central laser facility. I want to film from within the target chamber. This poses a few problems, one of which is that it is under a very pure vacuum.

The main problem with this is that things overheat in a vacuum, there’s no air to radiate away heat, and camera chips get pretty hot.

Laser burn mark archival test

The darker paper is a thin, emulsion coated paper made by Kodak which is now discontinued. But the CLF have a lot of it left over and it is very useful to make these tests.

I’ve treated some with photographic chemicals to try and preserve the marks. In this photo they’re on my windowsill where they will get direct sunlight for half the day. This should give them a good test for durability.

You can read more about this here: http://bit.ly/2SwcTSE

Chris Hooker (a scientist at the CLF) was demonstrating the Gemini laser. The comment ‘did it survive’ was in reference to my camera. I’ve got an infra red filter over the lens to try and protect it from the laser (which was infra red). The previous shots, filming without it, shut down my camera and the next time had a big purple ball of light on the side of the viewfinder.

It looks like it sorted itself out though.