T. C. Sangster

Spectrometry of charged particles from inertial-confinement-fusion plasmas

High-resolution spectrometry of charged particles from inertial-confinement-fusion (ICF) experiments has become an important method of studying plasma conditions in laser-compressed capsules. In experiments at the 60-beam OMEGA laser facility [T. R. Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)], utilizing capsules with D2, D3He, DT, or DTH fuel in a shell of plastic, glass, or D2 ice, we now routinely make spectral measurements of primary fusion products (p, D, T, 3He, α), secondary fusion products (p), “knock-on” particles (p, D, T) elastically scattered by primary neutrons, and ions from the shell. Use is made of several types of spectrometers that rely on detection and identification of particles with CR-39 nuclear track detectors in conjunction with magnets and/or special ranging filters. CR-39 is especially useful because of its insensitivity to electromagnetic noise and its ability to distinguish the types and energies of individual particles, as illustrated here by detailed calibrations of its respo...

The experimental plan for cryogenic layered target implosions on the National Ignition Facility—The inertial confinement approach to fusion

Ignition requires precisely controlled, high convergence implosions to assemble a dense shell of deuterium-tritium (DT) fuel with ρR>∼1 g/cm2 surrounding a 10 keV hot spot with ρR ∼ 0.3 g/cm2. A working definition of ignition has been a yield of ∼1 MJ. At this yield the α-particle energy deposited in the fuel would have been ∼200 kJ, which is already ∼10 × more than the kinetic energy of a typical implosion. The National Ignition Campaign includes low yield implosions with dudded fuel layers to study and optimize the hydrodynamic assembly of the fuel in a diagnostics rich environment. The fuel is a mixture of tritium-hydrogen-deuterium (THD) with a density equivalent to DT. The fraction of D can be adjusted to control the neutron yield. Yields of ∼1014−15 14 MeV (primary) neutrons are adequate to diagnose the hot spot as well as the dense fuel properties via down scattering of the primary neutrons. X-ray imaging diagnostics can function in this low yield environment providing additional information about ...

Improved performance of direct-drive inertial confinement fusion target designs with adiabat shaping using an intensity picket

Hydrodynamicinstabilities seeded by laser imprint and surface roughness limit the compression ratio and neutron yield in the direct-drive inertial confinement fusion target designs. New improved-performance designs use adiabat shaping to increase the entropy of only the outer portion of the shell, reducing the instability growth. The inner portion of the shell is kept on a lower entropy to maximize shell compressibility. The adiabat shaping is implemented using a high-intensity picket in front of the main-drive pulse. The picket launches a strong shock that decays as it propagates through the shell. This increases the ablation velocity and reduces the Rayleigh–Taylor growth rates. In addition, as shown earlier [T.J.B. Collins and S. Skupsky, Phys. Plasmas 9, 275 (2002)], the picket reduces the instability seed due to the laser imprint. To test the results of calculations, a series of the picket pulse implosions of CH capsules were performed on the OMEGA laser system [T.R. Boehly, D.L. Brown, R.S. Craxton et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)]. The experiments demonstrated a significant improvement in target yields for the pulses with the picket compared to the pulses without the picket. Results of the theory and experiments with adiabat shaping are being extended to future OMEGA and the National Ignition Facility’s [J.A. Paisner, J.D. Boyes, S.A. Kumpan, W.H. Lowdermilk, and M.S. Sorem, Laser Focus World 30, 75 (1994)] cryogenic target designs.

Polar direct drive on the National Ignition Facility

Three recent developments in direct-drive target design have enhanced the possibility of achieving high target gain on the National Ignition Facility (NIF): (1) Laser absorption was increased by almost 50% using wetted-foam targets. (2) Adiabat shaping significantly increased the hydrodynamic stability of the target during the acceleration phase of the implosion without sacrificing target gain. (3) Techniques to reduce laser imprint using pulse shaping and radiation preheat were developed. These design features can be employed for direct-drive-ignition experiments while the NIF is in the x-ray-drive configuration. This involves repointing some of the beams toward the equator of the target to improve uniformity of target drive. This approach, known as polar direct drive (PDD), will enhance the capability of the NIF to explore ignition conditions. PDD will couple more energy to the fuel than x-ray drive. The compressed fuel core can be more easily accessed for high-ρR diagnostic development and for fast-ign...

Direct-drive inertial confinement fusion: A review

The direct-drive, laser-based approach to inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is reviewed from its inception following the demonstration of the first laser to its implementation on the present generation of high-power lasers. The review focuses on the evolution of scientific understanding gained from target-physics experiments in many areas, identifying problems that were demonstrated and the solutions implemented. The review starts with the basic understanding of laser–plasma interactions that was obtained before the declassification of laser-induced compression in the early 1970s and continues with the compression experiments using infrared lasers in the late 1970s that produced thermonuclear neutrons. The problem of suprathermal electrons and the target preheat that they caused, associated with the infrared laser wavelength, led to lasers being built after 1980 to operate at shorter wavelengths, especially 0.35 μm—the third harmonic of the Nd:glass laser—and 0.248 μm (the KrF gas laser). The main physics areas relevant to direct drive are reviewed. The primary absorption mechanism at short wavelengths is classical inverse bremsstrahlung. Nonuniformities imprinted on the target by laser irradiation have been addressed by the development of a number of beam-smoothing techniques and imprint-mitigation strategies. The effects of hydrodynamic instabilities are mitigated by a combination of imprint reduction and target designs that minimize the instability growth rates. Several coronal plasma physics processes are reviewed. The two-plasmon–decay instability, stimulated Brillouin scattering (together with cross-beam energy transfer), and (possibly) stimulated Raman scattering are identified as potential concerns, placing constraints on the laser intensities used in target designs, while other processes (self-focusing and filamentation, the parametric decay instability, and magnetic fields), once considered important, are now of lesser concern for mainline direct-drive target concepts. Filamentation is largely suppressed by beam smoothing. Thermal transport modeling, important to the interpretation of experiments and to target design, has been found to be nonlocal in nature. Advances in shock timing and equation-of-state measurements relevant to direct-drive ICF are reported. Room-temperature implosions have provided an increased understanding of the importance of stability and uniformity. The evolution of cryogenic implosion capabilities, leading to an extensive series carried out on the 60-beam OMEGA laser [Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)], is reviewed together with major advances in cryogenic target formation. A polar-drive concept has been developed that will enable direct-drive–ignition experiments to be performed on the National Ignition Facility [Haynam et al., Appl. Opt. 46(16), 3276 (2007)]. The advantages offered by the alternative approaches of fast ignition and shock ignition and the issues associated with these concepts are described. The lessons learned from target-physics and implosion experiments are taken into account in ignition and high-gain target designs for laser wavelengths of 1/3 μm and 1/4 μm. Substantial advances in direct-drive inertial fusion reactor concepts are reviewed. Overall, the progress in scientific understanding over the past five decades has been enormous, to the point that inertial fusion energy using direct drive shows significant promise as a future environmentally attractive energy source.

Early stage of implosion in inertial confinement fusion: Shock timing and perturbation evolution

Excessive increase in the shell entropy and degradation from spherical symmetry in inertial confinement fusion implosions limit shell compression and could impede ignition. The entropy is controlled by accurately timing shock waves launched into the shell at an early stage of an implosion. The seeding of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, the main source of the asymmetry growth, is also set at early times during the shock transit across the shell. In this paper we model the shock timing and early perturbation growth of directly driven targets measured on the OMEGA laser system [T. R. Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)]. By analyzing the distortion evolution, it is shown that one of the main parameters characterizing the growth is the size of the conduction zone Dc, defined as a distance between the ablation front and the laser deposition region. Modes with kDc>1 are stable and experience oscillatory behavior [V. N. Goncharov, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 2091 (1999)]. The model shows that the main stabiliz...

Two-dimensional simulations of plastic-shell, direct-drive implosions on OMEGA

Multidimensional hydrodynamic properties of high-adiabat direct-drive plastic-shell implosions on the OMEGA laser system [T. R. Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)] are investigated using the multidimensional hydrodynamic code, DRACO [D. Keller et al., Bull. Am. Phys. Soc. 44, 37 (1999)]. Multimode simulations including the effects of nonuniform illumination and target roughness indicate that shell stability during the acceleration phase plays a critical role in determining target performance. For thick shells that remain integral during the acceleration phase, target yields are significantly reduced by the combination of the long-wavelength (l<10) modes due to surface roughness and beam imbalance and the intermediate modes (20⩽l⩽50) due to single-beam nonuniformities. The neutron-production rate for these thick shells truncates relative to one-dimensional (1D) predictions. The yield degradation in the thin shells is mainly due to shell breakup at short wavelengths (λ∼Δ, where Δ is the in-flight s...

Multidimensional analysis of direct-drive, plastic-shell implosions on OMEGA

Direct-drive, plastic shells imploded on the OMEGA laser system [T. R. Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)] with a 1ns square pulse are simulated using the multidimensional hydrodynamic code DRACO in yield degradation in “thin” shells is primarily caused by shell breakup during the acceleration phase due to short-wavelength (l>50, where l is the Legendre mode number) perturbation growth, whereas “thick” shell performance is influenced primarily by long and intermediate modes (l⩽50). Simulation yields, temporal history of neutron production, areal densities, and x-ray images of the core compare well with experimental observations. In particular, the thin-shell neutron production history falls off less steeply than one-dimensional predictions due to shell-breakup-induced undercompression and delayed stagnation. Thicker, more-stable shells show burn truncation due to instability-induced mass flow into the colder bubbles. Estimates of small-scale mix indicate that turbulent mixing does not influence p...

Neutron spectrometry--an essential tool for diagnosing implosions at the National Ignition Facility (invited).

DT neutron yield (Y(n)), ion temperature (T(i)), and down-scatter ratio (dsr) determined from measured neutron spectra are essential metrics for diagnosing the performance of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). A suite of neutron-time-of-flight (nTOF) spectrometers and a magnetic recoil spectrometer (MRS) have been implemented in different locations around the NIF target chamber, providing good implosion coverage and the complementarity required for reliable measurements of Y(n), T(i), and dsr. From the measured dsr value, an areal density (ρR) is determined through the relationship ρR(tot) (g∕cm(2)) = (20.4 ± 0.6) × dsr(10-12 MeV). The proportionality constant is determined considering implosion geometry, neutron attenuation, and energy range used for the dsr measurement. To ensure high accuracy in the measurements, a series of commissioning experiments using exploding pushers have been used for in situ calibration of the as-built spectrometers, which are now performing to the required accuracy. Recent data obtained with the MRS and nTOFs indicate that the implosion performance of cryogenically layered DT implosions, characterized by the experimental ignition threshold factor (ITFx), which is a function of dsr (or fuel ρR) and Y(n), has improved almost two orders of magnitude since the first shot in September, 2010.

Probing high areal-density cryogenic deuterium-tritium implosions using downscattered neutron spectra measured by the magnetic recoil spectrometer

For the first time high areal-density (ρR) cryogenic deuterium-tritium (DT) implosions have been probed using downscattered neutron spectra measured with the magnetic recoil spectrometer (MRS) [J. A. Frenje et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 79, 10E502 (2008)], recently installed and commissioned on OMEGA [T. R. Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)]. The ρR data obtained with the MRS have been essential for understanding how the fuel is assembled and for guiding the cryogenic program at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) to ρR values up to ∼300 mg/cm2. The ρR data obtained from well-established charged particle spectrometry techniques [C. K. Li et al., Phys. Plasmas 8, 4902 (2001)] were used to authenticate the MRS data for low-ρR plastic capsule implosions, and the ρR values inferred from these techniques are in excellent agreement, indicating that the MRS technique provides high-fidelity data. Recent OMEGA-MRS data and Monte Carlo simulations have shown that the MRS on the NIF [G. H. Miller et al....