Studying Nuclear Astrophysics at NIF
The National Ignition Facility's primary goal is to generate fusion energy. But the starlike conditions that it creates will also enable NIF scientists to study astrophysically important nuclear reactions. When scientists at the stadium-sized National Ignition Facility attempt to initiate fusion next year, 192 powerful lasers will direct 1.2 MJ of light energy toward a two-mm-diameter pellet of deuterium ({sup 2}H, or D) and tritium ({sup 3}H, or T). Some of that material will be gaseous, but most will be in a frozen shell. The idea is to initiate 'inertial confinement fusion', in which the two hydrogen isotopes fuse to produce helium-4, a neutron, and 17.6 MeV of energy. The light energy will be delivered to the inside walls of a hohlraum, a heavy-metal, centimeter-sized cylinder that houses the pellet. The container's heated walls will produce x rays that impinge on the pellet and ablate its outer surface. The exiting particles push inward on the pellet and compresses the DT fuel. Ultimately a hot spot develops at the pellet's center, where fusion produces {sup 4}He nuclei that have sufficient energy to propagate outward, trigger successive reactions, and finally react the frozen shell. Ignition should last several tens of picoseconds and generate more than 10 MJ of energy and roughly 10{sup 19} neutrons. The temperature will exceed 10{sup 8} K and fuel will be compressed to a density of several hundred g/cm{sup 3}, both considerably greater than at the center of the Sun. The figure shows a cutaway view of NIF. The extreme conditions that will be produced there simulate those in nuclear weapons and inside stars. For that reason, the facility is an important part of the US stockpile stewardship program, designed to assess the nation's aging nuclear stockpile without doing nuclear tests. In this Quick Study we consider a third application of NIF - using the extraordinary conditions it will produce to perform experiments in basic science. We will focus on measurements of some of the nuclear reaction probabilities that are important to nuclear astrophysics, the field that relates energy production and nucleosynthesis from nuclear reactions in stars and in the Big Bang to the environments in which those nuclear reactions occur. NIF, unlike previous nuclear-physics facilities, will enable measurements of nuclear reactions at the temperatures, densities, and ionization states similar to those that occur in stars.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 966556
- Report Number(s):
- LLNL-JRNL-414484; PHTOAD; TRN: US200921%%656
- Journal Information:
- Physics Today, Vol. 62, Issue 8; ISSN 0031-9228
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
The National Ignition Facility: Ushering in a new age for high energy density science
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journal | April 2009 |
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