Laser Beam Propagation through Inertial Confinement Fusion Hohlraum Plasmas
A study of the relevant laser-plasma interaction processes has been performed in long-scale length plasmas that emulate the plasma conditions in indirect drive inertial confinement fusion targets. Experiments in this high-temperature (T{sub e} = 3.5 keV), dense (n{sub e} = 0.5 - 1 x 10{sup -3}) hohlraum plasma have demonstrated that blue 351-nm laser beams produce less than 1% total backscatter resulting in transmission greater than 90% for ignition relevant laser intensities (I < 2 x 10{sup 15} W cm{sup -2}). The bulk plasma conditions have been independently characterized using Thomson scattering where the peak electron temperatures are shown to scale with the hohlraum heater beam energy in the range from 2 keV to 3.5 keV. This feature has allowed us to determine the thresholds for both backscattering and filamentation instabilities; the former measured with absolutely calibrated full aperture backscatter and near backscatter diagnostics and the latter with a transmitted beam diagnostics. Comparing the experimental results with detailed gain calculations for the onset of significant laser scattering processes shows that these results are relevant for the outer beams in ignition hohlraum experiments corresponding to a gain threshold for stimulated Brillouin scattering of 15. By increasing the gas fill density in these experiments further accesses inner beam ignition hohlraum conditions. In this case, stimulated Raman scattering dominates the backscattering processes. They show that scattering is small for gains smaller than 20, which can be achieved through proper choice of the laser beam intensity.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 902241
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-CONF-225802; TRN: US0702814
- Resource Relation:
- Journal Volume: 14; Journal Issue: 5; Conference: Presented at: 48th Annual Meeting of the Divsion Plasma Physics, Philadelphia, PA, United States, Oct 30 - Nov 03, 2006
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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