Proof of principle experiments that demonstrate utility of cocktail hohlraums for indirect drive ignition
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7000 East Avenue, L-399, Livermore, California 94550 (United States)
This work is a summary of experiments, numerical simulations, and analytic modeling that demonstrate improved radiation confinement when changing from a hohlraum made from gold to one made from a mixture of high Z materials (''cocktail''). First, the results from several previous planar sample experiments are described that demonstrated the potential of cocktail wall materials. Then a series of more recent experiments are described in which the radiation temperatures of hohlraums made from uranium-based cocktails were directly measured and compared with a gold reference hohlraum. Cocktail hohlraums meeting the oxygen specification (<5% atomic fraction oxygen) demonstrated an increase in radiation of up to 7 eV, agreeing well with modeling. When applied to an indirectly driven fusion capsule absorbing {approx}160 kJ of x-ray energy, these data suggest that a hohlraum made from a suitably chosen uranium-based cocktail would have about 17% less wall losses and require about 10% less laser energy than a gold hohlraum of the same size.
- OSTI ID:
- 20975069
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 14, Issue 5; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2712426; (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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