Assessment of ion kinetic effects in shock-driven inertial confinement fusion implosions using fusion burn imaging
- Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 (United States)
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550 (United States)
- Dipartimento SBAI, Università di Roma “La Sapienza” and CNISM, Via A. Scarpa 14-16, I-00161 Roma (Italy)
- Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 (United States)
- Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14623 (United States)
The significance and nature of ion kinetic effects in D{sup 3}He-filled, shock-driven inertial confinement fusion implosions are assessed through measurements of fusion burn profiles. Over this series of experiments, the ratio of ion-ion mean free path to minimum shell radius (the Knudsen number, N{sub K}) was varied from 0.3 to 9 in order to probe hydrodynamic-like to strongly kinetic plasma conditions; as the Knudsen number increased, hydrodynamic models increasingly failed to match measured yields, while an empirically-tuned, first-step model of ion kinetic effects better captured the observed yield trends [Rosenberg et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 185001 (2014)]. Here, spatially resolved measurements of the fusion burn are used to examine kinetic ion transport effects in greater detail, adding an additional dimension of understanding that goes beyond zero-dimensional integrated quantities to one-dimensional profiles. In agreement with the previous findings, a comparison of measured and simulated burn profiles shows that models including ion transport effects are able to better match the experimental results. In implosions characterized by large Knudsen numbers (N{sub K} ∼ 3), the fusion burn profiles predicted by hydrodynamics simulations that exclude ion mean free path effects are peaked far from the origin, in stark disagreement with the experimentally observed profiles, which are centrally peaked. In contrast, a hydrodynamics simulation that includes a model of ion diffusion is able to qualitatively match the measured profile shapes. Therefore, ion diffusion or diffusion-like processes are identified as a plausible explanation of the observed trends, though further refinement of the models is needed for a more complete and quantitative understanding of ion kinetic effects.
- OSTI ID:
- 22410522
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 22, Issue 6; Other Information: (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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