A. Nikroo

Symmetry control of an indirectly driven high-density-carbon implosion at high convergence and high velocity

We report on the most recent and successful effort at controlling the trajectory and symmetry of a high density carbon implosion at the National Ignition Facility. We use a low gasfill (0.3u2009mg/cc He) bare depleted uranium hohlraum with around 1u2009MJ of laser energy to drive a 3-shock-ignition relevant implosion. We assess drive performance and we demonstrate symmetry control at convergence 1, 3–5, 12, and 27 to better than ±5u2009μm using a succession of experimental platforms. The symmetry control was maintained at a peak fuel velocity of 380u2009km/s. Overall, implosion symmetry measurements are consistent with the pole-equator symmetry of the X-ray drive on the capsule being better than 5% in the foot of the drive (when shocks are launched) and better than 1% during peak drive (main acceleration phase). This level of residual asymmetry should have little impact on implosion performance.

Performance of indirectly driven capsule implosions on the National Ignition Facility using adiabat-shaping

A series of indirectly driven capsule implosions has been performed on the National Ignition Facility to assess the relative contributions of ablation-front instability growth vs. fuel compression on implosion performance. Laser pulse shapes for both low and high-foot pulses were modified to vary ablation-front growth and fuel adiabat, separately and controllably. Three principal conclusions are drawn from this study: (1) It is shown that reducing ablation-front instability growth in low-foot implosions results in a substantial (3-10X) increase in neutron yield with no loss of fuel compression. (2) It is shown that reducing the fuel adiabat in high-foot implosions results in a significant (36%) increase in fuel compression together with a small (10%) increase in neutron yield. (3) Increased electron preheat at higher laser power in high-foot implosions, however, appears to offset the gain in compression achieved by adiabat-shaping at lower power. These results taken collectively bridge the space between t...

The near vacuum hohlraum campaign at the NIF: A new approach

The near vacuum campaign on the National Ignition Facility has concentrated its efforts over the last year on finding the optimum target geometry to drive a symmetric implosion at high convergence ratio (30×). As the hohlraum walls are not tamped with gas, the hohlraum is filling with gold plasma and the challenge resides in depositing enough energy in the hohlraum before it fills up. Hohlraum filling is believed to cause symmetry swings late in the pulse that are detrimental to the symmetry of the hot spot at high convergence. This paper describes a series of experiments carried out to examine the effect of increasing the distance between the hohlraum wall and the capsule (case to capsule ratio) on the symmetry of the hot spot. These experiments have shown that smaller Case to Capsule Ratio (CCR of 2.87 and 3.1) resulted in oblate implosions that could not be tuned round. Larger CCR (3.4) led to a prolate implosion at convergence 30× implying that inner beam propagation at large CCR is not impeded by the expanding hohlraum plasma. A Case to Capsule ratio of 3.4 is a promising geometry to design a round implosion but in a smaller hohlraum where the hohlraum losses are lower, enabling a wider cone fraction range to adjust symmetry.

Indirect drive ignition at the National Ignition Facility

This paper reviews scientific results from the pursuit of indirect drive ignition on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and describes the programs forward looking research directions. In indirect drive on the NIF, laser beams heat an x-ray enclosure called a hohlraum that surrounds a spherical pellet. X-ray radiation ablates the surface of the pellet, imploding a thin shell of deuterium/tritium (DT) that must accelerate to high velocity (v > 350 km s−1) and compress by a factor of several thousand. Since 2009, substantial progress has been made in understanding the major challenges to ignition: Rayleigh Taylor (RT) instability seeded by target imperfections; and low-mode asymmetries in the hohlraum x-ray drive, exacerbated by laser-plasma instabilities (LPI). Requirements on velocity, symmetry, and compression have been demonstrated separately on the NIF but have not been achieved simultaneously. We now know that the RT instability, seeded mainly by the capsule support tent, severely degraded DT implosions from 2009–2012. Experiments using a high-foot drive with demonstrated lower RT growth improved the thermonuclear yield by a factor of 10, resulting in yield amplification due to alpha particle heating by more than a factor of 2. However, large time dependent drive asymmetry in the LPI-dominated hohlraums remains unchanged, preventing further improvements. High fidelity 3D hydrodynamic calculations explain these results. Future research efforts focus on improved capsule mounting techniques and on hohlraums with little LPI and controllable symmetry. In parallel, we are pursuing improvements to the basic physics models used in the design codes through focused physics experiments.

First beryllium capsule implosions on the National Ignition Facility

The first indirect drive implosion experiments using Beryllium (Be) capsules at the National Ignition Facility confirm the superior ablation properties and elucidate possible Be-ablator issues such as hohlraum filling by ablator material. Since the 1990s, Be has been the preferred Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) ablator because of its higher mass ablation rate compared to that of carbon-based ablators. This enables ICF target designs with higher implosion velocities at lower radiation temperatures and improved hydrodynamic stability through greater ablative stabilization. Recent experiments to demonstrate the viability of Be ablator target designs measured the backscattered laser energy, capsule implosion velocity, core implosion shape from self-emission, and in-flight capsule shape from backlit imaging. The laser backscatter is similar to that from comparable plastic (CH) targets under the same hohlraum conditions. Implosion velocity measurements from backlit streaked radiography show that laser energy coupling to the hohlraum wall is comparable to plastic ablators. The measured implosion shape indicates no significant reduction of laser energy from the inner laser cone beams reaching the hohlraum wall as compared with plastic and high-density carbon ablators. These results indicate that the high mass ablation rate for beryllium capsules does not significantly alter hohlraum energetics. In addition, these data, together with data for low fill-density hohlraum performance, indicate that laser power multipliers, required to reconcile simulations with experimental observations, are likely due to our limited understanding of the hohlraum rather than the capsule physics since similar multipliers are needed for both Be and CH capsules as seen in experiments.

Improving ICF implosion performance with alternative capsule supports

The thin membrane that holds the capsule in-place in the hohlraum is recognized as one of the most significant contributors to reduced performance in indirect drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments on the National Ignition Facility. This membrane, known as the “tent,” seeds a perturbation that is amplified by Rayleigh-Taylor and can rupture the capsule. A less damaging capsule support mechanism is under development. Possible alternatives include the micron-scale rods spanning the hohlraum width and supporting either the capsule or stiffening the fill-tube, a larger fill-tube to both fill and support the capsule, or a low-density foam layer that protects the capsule from the tent impact. Experiments are testing these support features to measure their imprint on the capsule. These experiments are revealing unexpected aspects about perturbation development in indirect drive ICF, such as the importance of shadows coming from bright spots in the hohlraum. Two dimensional and 3D models are used to ...

Experimental results of radiation-driven, layered deuterium-tritium implosions with adiabat-shaped drives at the National Ignition Facility

Radiation-driven, layered deuterium-tritium (DT) implosions were carried out using 3-shock and 4-shock “adiabat-shaped” drives and plastic ablators on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [E. M. Campbell et al., AIP Conf. Proc. 429, 3 (1998)]. The purpose of these shots was to gain further understanding on the relative performance of the low-foot implosions of the National Ignition Campaign [M. J. Edwards et al., Phys. Plasmas 20, 070501 (2013)] versus the subsequent high-foot implosions [T. Doppner et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 055001 (2015)]. The neutron yield performance in the experiment with the 4-shock adiabat-shaped drive was improved by factors ∼3 to ∼10, compared to five companion low-foot shots despite large low-mode asymmetries of DT fuel, while measured compression was similar to its low-foot companions. This indicated that the dominant degradation source for low-foot implosions was ablation-front instability growth, since adiabat shaping significantly stabilized this growth. For the experiment with the low-power 3-shock adiabat-shaped drive, the DT fuel compression was significantly increased, by ∼25% to ∼36%, compared to its companion high-foot implosions. The neutron yield increased by ∼20%, lower than the increase of ∼50% estimated from one-dimensional scaling, suggesting the importance of residual instabilities and asymmetries. For the experiment with the high-power, 3-shock adiabat-shaped drive, the DT fuel compression was slightly increased by ∼14% compared to its companion high-foot experiments. However, the compression was reduced compared to the lower-power 3-shock adiabat-shaped drive, correlated with the increase of hot electrons that hypothetically can be responsible for reduced compression in high-power adiabat-shaped experiments as well as in high-foot experiments. The total neutron yield in the high-power 3-shock adiabat-shaped shot N150416 was 8.5u2009×u20091015u2009±u20090.2u2009×u20091015, with the fuel areal density of 0.90u2009±u20090.07u2009g/cm2, corresponding to the ignition threshold factor parameter IFTX (calculated without alpha heating) of 0.34u2009±u20090.03 and the yield amplification due to the alpha heating of 2.4u2009±u20090.2. The performance parameters were among the highest of all shots on NIF and the closest to ignition at this time, based on the IFTX metric. The follow-up experiments were proposed to continue testing physics hypotheses, to measure implosion reproducibility, and to improve quantitative understanding on present implosion results.

Measurements of preheat and shock melting in Be ablators during the first few nanoseconds of a National Ignition Facility ignition drive using the Omega laser

A scaled Hohlraum platform was used to experimentally measure preheat in ablator materials during the first few nanoseconds of a radiation drive proposed for ignition experiments at the National Ignition Facility [J. A. Paisner et al., Laser Focus World 30, 75 (1994)]. The platform design approximates the radiation environment of the pole of the capsule by matching both the laser spot intensity and illuminated Hohlraum wall fraction in scaled halfraums driven by the OMEGA laser system [T. R. Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)]. Back surface motion measured via VISAR reflecting from the rear surface of the sample was used to measure sample motion prior to shock breakout. The experiments show that the first ∼20u2002μm of a Be ablator will be melted by radiation preheat, with subsequent material melted by the initial shock, in agreement with simulations. The experiments also show no evidence of anomalous heating of buried high-Z doped layers in the ablator.

Electron temperature measurements inside the ablating plasma of gas-filled hohlraums at the National Ignition Facility

The first measurement of the electron temperature (Te) inside a National Ignition Facility hohlraum is obtained using temporally resolved K-shell X-ray spectroscopy of a mid-Z tracer dot. Both isoelectronic- and interstage-line ratios are used to calculate the local Te via the collisional–radiative atomic physics code SCRAM [Hansen et al., High Energy Density Phys 3, 109 (2007)]. The trajectory of the mid-Z dot as it is ablated from the capsule surface and moves toward the laser entrance hole (LEH) is measured using side-on x-ray imaging, characterizing the plasma flow of the ablating capsule. Data show that the measured dot location is farther away from the LEH in comparison to the radiation-hydrodynamics simulation prediction using HYDRA [Marinak et al., Phys. Plasmas 3, 2070 (1996)]. To account for this discrepancy, the predicted simulation Te is evaluated at the measured dot trajectory. The peak Te, measured to be 4.2u2009keVu2009±u20090.2u2009keV, is ∼0.5u2009keV hotter than the simulation prediction.

The role of hot spot mix in the low-foot and high-foot implosions on the NIF

Hydrodynamic mix of the ablator into the DT fuel layer and hot spot can be a critical performance limitation in inertial confinement fusion implosions. This mix results in increased radiation loss, cooling of the hot spot, and reduced neutron yield. To quantify the level of mix, we have developed a simple model that infers the level of contamination using the ratio of the measured x-ray emission to the neutron yield. The principal source for the performance limitation of the “low-foot” class of implosions appears to have been mix. Lower convergence “high-foot” implosions are found to be less susceptible to mix, allowing velocities ofu2009>380u2009km/s to be achieved.