High performance capsule implosions on the OMEGA Laser facility with rugby hohlraums

Journal Article · Sat May 15 00:00:00 EDT 2010 · Physics of Plasmas

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3360926· OSTI ID:21371299

Robey, H F; Amendt, P; Park, H -S; Town, R P. J.; Milovich, J L; Doeppner, T; Hinkel, D E; Wallace, R; Sorce, C; Strozzi, D J ^[1]; Philippe, F; Casner, A; Caillaud, T; Landoas, O; Liberatore, S; Monteil, M -C ^[2]; Seguin, F; Rosenberg, M; Li, C K; Petrasso, R ^[3]

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1. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550 (United States)
2. CEA, DAM, DIF, F-91297 Arpajon (France)
3. Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 (United States)

Rugby-shaped hohlraums have been proposed as a method for x-ray drive enhancement for indirectly driven capsule implosions. This concept has recently been tested in a series of shots on the OMEGA laser facility [T. R. Boehly, D. L. Brown, R. S. Craxton et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)]. In this paper, experimental results are presented comparing the performance of D{sub 2}-filled capsules between standard cylindrical Au hohlraums and rugby-shaped hohlraums. The rugby hohlraums demonstrated 18% more x-ray drive energy as compared with the cylinders, and the high-performance design of these implosions (both cylinder and rugby) also provided {approx_equal}20x more deuterium (DD) neutrons than any previous indirectly driven campaign on OMEGA and {approx_equal}3x more than ever achieved on NOVA [E. M. Campbell, Laser Part. Beams 9, 209 (1991)] implosions driven with nearly twice the laser energy. This increase in performance enables, for the first time, a measurement of the neutron burn history and imaging of the neutron core shapes in an indirectly driven implosion. Previous DD neutron yields had been too low to register this key measurement of capsule performance and the effects of dynamic mix. A wealth of additional data on the fuel areal density from the suite of charged particle diagnostics was obtained on a subset of the shots that used D {sup 3}He rather than D{sub 2} fuel. Comparisons of the experimental results with numerical simulations are shown to be in very good agreement. The design techniques employed in this campaign, e.g., smaller laser entrance holes and hohlraum case-to-capsule ratios, provide added confidence in the pursuit of ignition on the National Ignition Facility [J. D. Lindl, P. Amendt, R. L. Berger et al., Phys. Plasmas 11, 339 (2004)].

• OSTI ID: 21371299
• Journal Information: Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 17, Issue 5; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3360926; (c) 2010 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 1070-664X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
CAPSULES
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DEUTERIUM
HELIUM
IMPLOSIONS
LASERS
PERFORMANCE
PLASMA DIAGNOSTICS
X RADIATION
CONTAINERS
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
ELEMENTS
FLUIDS
GASES
HYDROGEN ISOTOPES
IONIZING RADIATIONS
ISOTOPES
LIGHT NUCLEI
NONMETALS
NUCLEI
ODD-ODD NUCLEI
RADIATIONS
RARE GASES
SIMULATION
STABLE ISOTOPES