X. T. He

A hybrid-drive nonisobaric-ignition scheme for inertial confinement fusion

A new hybrid-drive (HD) nonisobaric ignition scheme of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is proposed, in which a HD pressure to drive implosion dynamics increases via increasing density rather than temperature in the conventional indirect drive (ID) and direct drive (DD) approaches. In this HD (combination of ID and DD) scheme, an assembled target of a spherical hohlraum and a layered deuterium-tritium capsule inside is used. The ID lasers first drive the shock to perform a spherical symmetry implosion and produce a large-scale corona plasma. Then, the DD lasers, whose critical surface in ID corona plasma is far from the radiation ablation front, drive a supersonic electron thermal wave, which slows down to a high-pressure electron compression wave, like a snowplow, piling up the corona plasma into high density and forming a HD pressurized plateau with a large width. The HD pressure is several times the conventional ID and DD ablation pressure and launches an enhanced precursor shock and a continuous compression wave, which give rise to the HD capsule implosion dynamics in a large implosion velocity. The hydrodynamic instabilities at imploding capsule interfaces are suppressed, and the continuous HD compression wave provides main pdV work large enough to hotspot, resulting in the HD nonisobaric ignition. The ignition condition and target design based on this scheme are given theoretically and by numerical simulations. It shows that the novel scheme can significantly suppress implosion asymmetry and hydrodynamic instabilities of current isobaric hotspot ignition design, and a high-gain ICF is promising.

Hundreds MeV monoenergetic proton bunch from interaction of 1020–21 W/cm2 circularly polarized laser pulse with tailored complex target

A complex target (CT) configuration tailored for generating high quality proton bunch by circularly polarized laser pulses at intensities of 10 20 - 21 W/cm2 is proposed. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that both the collimation and mono-energetic qualities of the accelerated proton bunch obtained using a front-shaped thin foil can be greatly enhanced by the backside inhomogeneous plasma layer. The main mechanisms for improving the accelerated protons are identified and discussed. These include stabilization of the photoncavity, providing hole-boring supplementary acceleration and suppressing the thermal-electron effects. A theory for tailoring the CT parameters is also presented.

Effects of the imposed magnetic field on the production and transport of relativistic electron beams

The effects of the imposed uniform magnetic field, ranging from 1 MG up to 50 MG, on the production and transport of relativistic electron beams (REBs) in overdense plasmas irradiated by ultraintense laser pulse are investigated with two-dimensional particle-in-cell numerical simulations. This study gives clear evidence that the imposed magnetic field is capable of effectively confining the relativistic electrons in space even when the source is highly divergent since it forces the electrons moving helically. In comparison, the spontaneous magnetic fields, generated by the helically moving electrons interplaying with the current filamentation instability, are dominant in scattering the relativistic electrons. As the imposed magnetic field was increased from 1 MG to 50 MG, overall coupling from laser to the relativistic electrons which have the potential to heat the compressed core in fast ignition was found to increase from 6.9% to 21.3% while the divergence of the REB increases significantly from 64° to ...

Spike deceleration and bubble acceleration in the ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability

The nonlinear evolutions of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) with preheat is investigated by numerical simulation (NS). A new phase of the spike deceleration evolution in the nonlinear ablative RTI (ARTI) is discovered. It is found that nonlinear evolution of the RTI can be divided into the weakly nonlinear regime (WNR) and the highly nonlinear regime (HNR) according to the difference of acceleration velocities for the spike and the bubble. With respect to the classical RTI (i.e., without heat conduction), the bubble first accelerates in the WNR and then decelerates in the HNR while the spike holds acceleration in the whole nonlinear regime (NR). With regard to the ARTI, on the contrary, the spike first accelerates in the WNR and then decelerates in the HNR while the bubble keeps acceleration in the whole NR. The NS results indicate that it is the nonlinear overpressure effect at the spike tip and the vorticity accumulation inside the bubble that lead to, respectively, the spike deceleration and bubble acceleration, in the nonlinear ARTI. In addition, it is found that in the ARTI the spike saturation velocity increases with the perturbation wavelength.

Nonlinear saturation amplitudes in classical Rayleigh-Taylor instability at arbitrary Atwood numbers

In this research, nonlinear saturation amplitudes (NSAs) of the first two harmonics in Rayleigh-Taylor instability(RTI) for irrotational, incompressible, and inviscid fluids, with a discontinuous profile at arbitrary Atwood numbers, are investigated analytically, by considering nonlinear corrections up to the tenth-order. The NSA of the fundamental mode is defined as the linear (purely exponential) growth amplitude of the fundamental mode at the saturation time when the growth of the fundamental mode (first harmonic) is reduced by 10% in comparison to its corresponding linear growth. The NSA of the second harmonic can be obtained in the same way. The analytic results indicate that the effects of the higher-order correction (HOC) and the Atwood number (A) play an important role in the NSA of the RTI. It is found that the NSA of the fundamental mode decreases with increasing A. And when the HOC effects are considered, the NSA of the fundamental mode is significantly larger than the prediction of previous literatures within the framework of third-order perturbation theory [J. W. Jacobs and I. Catton, J. Fluid Mech. 187, 329 (1988); S. W. Haan, Phys. Fluids B 3, 2349 (1991)]. We find that the NSA of the second harmonic first decreases quickly with increasing A, reaching a minimum, and then increases slowly. Furthermore, the NSAs of the first two harmonics demonstrate the trend of convergence as the order of corrections increases. Thus, it should be included in applications where the NSAs play a role, such as inertial confinement fusion ignition target design.

Sub-TeV proton beam generation by ultra-intense laser irradiation of foil-and-gas target

A two-phase proton acceleration scheme using an ultra-intense laser pulse irradiating a proton foil with a tenuous heavier-ion plasma behind it is presented. The foil electrons are compressed and pushed out as a thin dense layer by the radiation pressure and propagate in the plasma behind at near the light speed. The protons are in turn accelerated by the resulting space-charge field and also enter the backside plasma, but without the formation of a quasistationary double layer. The electron layer is rapidly weakened by the space-charge field. However, the laser pulse originally behind it now snowplows the backside-plasma electrons and creates an intense electrostatic wakefield. The latter can stably trap and accelerate the pre-accelerated proton layer there for a very long distance and thus to very high energies. The two-phase scheme is verified by particle-in-cell simulations and analytical modeling, which also suggests that a 0.54 TeV proton beam can be obtained with a 1023 W/cm2 laser pulse.

Magnetic collimation of fast electrons in specially engineered targets irradiated by ultraintense laser pulses

The efficient magnetic collimation of fast electron flow transporting in overdense plasmas is investigated with two-dimensional collisional particle-in-cell numerical simulations. It is found that the specially engineered targets exhibiting either high-resistivity-core-low-resistivity-cladding structure or low-density-core-high-density-cladding structure can collimate fast electrons. Two main mechanisms to generate collimating magnetic fields are found. In high-resistivity-core-low-resistivity-cladding structure targets, the magnetic field at the interfaces is generated by the gradients of the resistivity and fast electron current, while in low-density-core-high-density-cladding structure targets, the magnetic field is generated by the rapid changing of the flow velocity of the background electrons in transverse direction (perpendicular to the flow velocity) caused by the density jump. The dependences of the maximal magnetic field on the incident laser intensity and plasma density, which are studied by numerical simulations, are supported by our analytical calculations.

Guiding and confining fast electrons by transient electric and magnetic fields with a plasma inverse cone

The fast electron propagation in an inverse cone target is investigated computationally and experimentally. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation shows that fast electrons with substantial numbers are generated at the outer tip of an inverse cone target irradiated by a short intense laser pulse. These electrons are guided and confined to propagate along the inverse cone wall, forming a large surface current. The propagation induces strong transient electric and magnetic fields which guide and confine the surface electron current. The experiment qualitatively verifies the guiding and confinement of the strong electron current in the wall surface. The large surface current and induced strong fields are of importance for fast ignition related researches.

Enhanced target normal sheath acceleration of protons from intense laser interaction with a cone-tube target

Laser driven proton acceleration is proposed to be greatly enhanced by using a cone-tube target, which can be easily manufactured by current 3D-print technology. It is observed that energetic electron bunches are generated along the tube and accelerated to a much higher temperature by the combination of ponderomotive force and longitudinal electric field which is induced by the optical confinement of the laser field. As a result, a localized and enhanced sheath field is produced at the rear of the target and the maximum proton energy is about three-fold increased based on the two-dimentional particle-in-cell simulation results. It is demonstrated that by employing this advanced target scheme, the scaling of the proton energy versus the laser intensity is much beyond the normal target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) case.

Mitigating the relativistic laser beam filamentation via an elliptical beam profile.

It is shown that the filamentation instability of relativistically intense laser pulses in plasmas can be mitigated in the case where the laser beam has an elliptically distributed beam profile. A high-power elliptical Gaussian laser beam would break up into a regular filamentation pattern-in contrast to the randomly distributed filaments of a circularly distributed laser beam-and much more laser power would be concentrated in the central region. A highly elliptically distributed laser beam experiences anisotropic self-focusing and diffraction processes in the plasma channel ensuring that the unstable diffractive rings of the circular case cannot be produced. The azimuthal modulational instability is thereby suppressed. These findings are verified by three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations.