Burning plasmas with ultrashort soft-x-ray flashing
- Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, 250 East River Road, Rochester, New York 14623-1299 (United States)
Fast ignition with narrow-band coherent x-ray pulses has been revisited for cryogenic deuterium-tritium (DT) plasma conditions achieved on the OMEGA Laser System. In contrast to using hard-x-rays (hv = 3-6 keV) proposed in the original x-ray fast-ignition proposal, we find that soft-x-ray sources with hv Almost-Equal-To 500 eV photons can be suitable for igniting the dense DT-plasmas achieved on OMEGA. Two-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamics simulations have identified the break-even conditions for realizing such a 'hybrid' ignition scheme (direct-drive compression with soft-x-ray heating) with 50-{mu}m-offset targets: {approx}10 ps soft-x-ray pulse (hv Almost-Equal-To 500 eV) with a total energy of 500-1000 J to be focused into a 10 {mu}m spot-size. A variety of x-ray pulse parameters have also been investigated for optimization. It is noted that an order of magnitude increase in neutron yield has been predicted even with x-ray energy as low as {approx}50 J. Scaling this idea to a 1 MJ large-scale target, a gain above {approx}30 can be reached with the same soft-x-ray pulse at 1.65 kJ energy. Even though such energetic x-ray sources do not currently exist, we hope that the proposed ignition scheme may stimulate efforts on generating powerful soft-x-ray sources in the near future.
- OSTI ID:
- 22072586
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 19, Issue 7; Other Information: (c) 2012 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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