This thesis details my work on developing a new Thomson parabola spectrometer for use at the
SCARLET Laser Facility at The Ohio State University. The SCARLET laser facility is a 300
TW laser reaching peak intensities exceeding 10 21 W/cm 2 . The laser is used to study laser-matter
interactions and plasma phenomena. The laser-matter interactions accelerate multiple types of
particles and to understand the interactions it is necessary to have diagnostic tools to characterize
the accelerated particles. In order to measure the charged particles a common device is a
Thomson parabola spectrometer. A Thomson parabola spectrometer uses parallel electric and
magnetic fields that are perpendicular to the incoming particles. This causes deflection of the
particles based on their charge-to-mass ratio and energy. Therefore, the Thomson parabola
spectrometer allows us to determine what particles are present and what their energy range is.
I designed a new spectrometer to replace the existing Thomson parabola spectrometer which had
problems during operation that reduced performance. Using a MATLAB code, I first modeled
the performance of the new design to determine physical dimensions and field strengths that
would allow for 1 MeV resolution of protons up to a maximum energy of 40 MeV. This resulted
in a 5 cm long magnetic field with a field strength of 0.12 T and 10 cm electrodes with a voltage
difference of 6 kV. These physical dimensions were used to create a SolidWorks model. As of
this writing, the newly designed Thomson parabola spectrometer has been built and is currently
being installed for use on future experiments.No embargoAcademic Major: Engineering Physic
