Fig. 1. Artist’s 3D impression of the Vulcan laser facility.

Fig. 2. Schematic of the Vulcan beam line for TAP.

Fig. 3. Schematic of the Vulcan short pulse beam lines for TAW.

Fig. 4. Example of the output of a diagnostics package from the TAW oscillator.

Fig. 5. Diagnostics package to monitor the injection into the laser bay.

Fig. 6. Diagnostics package for the injection into the rod chain.

Fig. 7. Diagnostics package at the end of the rod amplifier chain.

Fig. 8. Schematic of the diagnostics package used at the end of the disc amplifier chain.

Fig. 9. Schematic of the diagnostics package at the output of the 108 mm beamlines. The beam is incident from the left and is being focused by a lens (not shown).

Fig. 10. Schematic of the Vulcan short pulse diagnostics in TAP. The main pulse follows the red path, the full aperture beam the pink path and the sub-aperture diagnostics the green path.

Fig. 11. Oscilloscope trace of contrast diode capture on a shot.

Fig. 12. Laser near-field recorded on the full aperture diagnostics.

Fig. 13. Layout of the low sub-aperture diagnostics.

Fig. 14. Near-field incident onto the sub-aperture diagnostics.

Fig. 15. Image captured by the near-field autocorrelator in the sub-aperture diagnostics package.

Fig. 16. Example of an autocorrelation trace recorded using the sub-aperture diagnostics line.

Fig. 17. Image of the post-compression diagnostics suite in TAW.

Fig. 18. Schematic of the layout for the short pulse diagnostics in TAW.

Fig. 19. Histogram of pulse durations recorded during an experimental campaign in TAP.

Fig. 20. Histogram of pulse durations recorded during an experimental campaign in TAW.