Development and Commissioning of GALADRIEL, the General Atomics LAboratory for Developing Rep-Rated Instrumentation and Experiments with Lasers

As High Energy Density (HED) sciences and their corresponding facilities advance into higher rep-rate and energy regimes, the diagnostics, targets, and data processing employed during experiments must evolve equally. However, while next-generation HED facilities utilizing laser systems may operate at rates of
$\sim 0.1$
- 10 Hz, they often only field single- or few-shot diagnostics and target delivery systems. GALADRIEL, built around a commercial
$\sim 1$
TW
$(< 20\ \text{fs},\ 25\ \text{mj},\ 800\ \text{nm})$
Ti:Sapph laser system capable of 10 Hz operation, intends to serve as a development testbed for rep-rated diagnostics and target delivery systems, as well as control feedback systems, data storage and management protocols, data analysis, and machine learning techniques. GALADRIEL was built to serve not only as a platform for the internal development of these rep-rated technologies at General Atomics, in San Diego CA, but is also as a user facility providing easy access to HED environments at rep-rate. Here we present the specifications and capabilities of the GALADRIEL facility, data from the commissioning experiments which generated
$\sim \text{MeV}$
electrons via laser-wakefield characterized by a magnet-based spectrometer to measure the electron energy spectrum and a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor to measure areal electron density in the plasma, and updates regarding current automation and feedback systems.