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High-density carbon ablator experiments on the National Ignition Facility

Journal Article · · Physics of Plasmas
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4876611· OSTI ID:1165740
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  1. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  2. MIT (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology), Cambridge, MA (United States)
  3. Univ. of Rochester, NY (United States)
  4. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  5. General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States)
  6. Diamond Materials GmbH, Freiburg (Germany)
+ Show Author Affiliations

High Density Carbon (HDC) is a leading candidate as an ablator material for Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) capsules in x-ray (indirect) drive implosions. HDC has a higher density (3.5 g/cc) than plastic (CH, 1 g/cc), which results in a thinner ablator with a larger inner radius for a given capsule scale. This leads to higher x-ray absorption and shorter laser pulses compared to equivalent CH designs. This paper will describe a series of experiments carried out to examine the feasibility of using HDC as an ablator using both gas filled hohlraums and lower density, near vacuum hohlraums. These experiments have shown that deuterium (DD) and deuterium-tritium gas filled HDC capsules driven by a hohlraum filled with 1.2 mg/cc He gas, produce neutron yields a factor of 2x higher than equivalent CH implosions, representing better than 50% Yield-over-Clean (YoC). In a near vacuum hohlraum (He = 0.03 mg/cc) with 98% laser-to-hohlraum coupling, such a DD gas-filled capsule performed near 1D expectations. A cryogenic layered implosion version was consistent with a fuel velocity = 410 ± 20 km/s with no observed ablator mixing into the hot spot.

Research Organization:
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States). Plasma Science and Fusion Center; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC52-07NA27344; NA0001857
OSTI ID:
1165740
Journal Information:
Physics of Plasmas, Journal Name: Physics of Plasmas Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 21; ISSN PHPAEN; ISSN 1070-664X
Publisher:
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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HOHLRAUM
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