Direct Measurements of DT Fuel Preheat from Hot Electrons in Direct-Drive Inertial Confinement Fusion

Dataset · Thu Jun 09 04:00:00 EDT 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/PEH7OP· OSTI ID:1889453

Christopherson, A. R. ^[1]; Betti, R.; Forrest, C. J.; Howard, J.; Theobald, W.; Delettrez, J. A.; Rosenberg, M. J.; Solodov, A. A.; Stoeckl, C.; Patel, D.; Gopalaswamy, V.; Cao, D.; Peebles, J. L.; Edgell, D. H.; Seka, W.; Epstein, R.; Wei, M. S.; Gatu Johnson, M.; Simpson, R.; Regan, S. P. ; Campbell, E. M.

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1. OSTI

Hot electrons generated by laser-plasma instabilities degrade the performance of laser-fusion implosions by preheating the DT fuel and reducing core compression. The hot-electron energy deposition in the DT fuel has been directly measured for the first time by comparing the hard x-ray signals between DT-layered and mass-equivalent ablator-only implosions. The electron energy deposition profile in the fuel is inferred through dedicated experiments using Cu-doped payloads of varying thickness. The measured preheat energy accurately explains the areal-density degradation observed in many OMEGA implosions. This technique can be used to assess the viability of the direct-drive approach to laser fusion with respect to the scaling of hot-electron preheat with laser energy.

• Research Organization: Univ. of Rochester, NY (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: NA0003856
• OSTI ID: 1889453
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY