The first measurements of soft x-ray flux from ignition scale Hohlraums at the national ignition facility using DANTE
The first 96 and 192 beam vacuum hohlraum have been fielded at the National Ignition Facility demonstrating radiation temperatures up to 340 eV and fluxes of 20 TW/sr representing a 20 times flux increase over NOVA/Omega scale hohlraums. The vacuum hohlraums were irradiated with 2 ns square pulses with energies between 150 - 635 kJ. They produced nearly Planckian spectra with about 30 {+-} 10% more flux than predicted by the current radiation hydrodynamic simulations after careful verification of all component calibrations (which included an {approx} 10% downward correction to Center X-Ray Optics opacities just below the Cu L edge at 50-750 eV), cable deconvolution, and analysis software routines. To corroborate these results, first a half hohlraum experiment was conducted using a single 2 ns-long axial quad with an irradiance of {approx} 1-2 x 10{sup 15} W/cm{sup 2} for comparison with NIF Early Light experiments completed in 2004. Second, we completed a conversion efficiency test using a 128-beam nearly uniformly illuminated gold sphere with intensities kept low (at 1 x 10{sup 14} W/cm{sup 2} over 5 ns) to avoid sensitivity to modeling uncertainties for non-local heat conduction and non-linear absorption mechanisms, to compare with similar intensity, 3 ns OMEGA sphere results. The 2004 and 2009 NIF half-hohlraums agreed to 10% in flux, but more importantly, the 2006 OMEGA Au Sphere, the 2009 NIF Au sphere and the calculated Au conversion efficiency agree to {+-}5% in flux, which is estimated to be the absolute calibration accuracy of the DANTEs. Hence we concluded the 30 {+-} 10% higher than expected radiation fluxes from the 96 and 192 beam vacuum hohlraums are attributable to differences in physics when we transitioned to large hot hohlraums. Specifically, using variants in the atomic physics models and electron heat conduction, newer simulations show that nonlocalization of energy deposition leads to less energy being stored in the coronal plasma leading to higher x-ray conversion efficiency. Since the larger volume-to-area ratio hohlraums have large coronal plasmas which scale volumetrically, the reduction in energy losses to the corona become more pronounced than for smaller NOVA/Omega scale hohlraums. The higher conversion efficiencies are also consistent with observations from other 1 ns gold sphere experiments conducted at Omega with 1 x 10{sup 15} W/cm{sup 2} laser irradiances.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1012380
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-10-03102; LA-UR-10-3102
- Journal Information:
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 81, Issue 10; ISSN 0034-6748
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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