The National Ignition Facility neutron time-of-flight system and its initial performance (invited)

Journal Article · Fri Oct 15 00:00:00 EDT 2010 · Review of Scientific Instruments

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3492351· OSTI ID:22055769

Glebov, V Yu; Sangster, T C; Stoeckl, C; Knauer, J P; Theobald, W; Marshall, K L; Shoup, III, M J; Buczek, T; Cruz, M; Duffy, T; Romanofsky, M; Fox, M; Pruyne, A ^[1]; Moran, M J; Lerche, R A; McNaney, J; Kilkenny, J D; Eckart, M J; Schneider, D; Munro, D ^[2] ; others, and

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1. Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, 250 East River Road, Rochester, New York 14623 (United States)
2. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, California 94550 (United States)

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) successfully completed its first inertial confinement fusion (ICF) campaign in 2009. A neutron time-of-flight (nTOF) system was part of the nuclear diagnostics used in this campaign. The nTOF technique has been used for decades on ICF facilities to infer the ion temperature of hot deuterium (D{sub 2}) and deuterium-tritium (DT) plasmas based on the temporal Doppler broadening of the primary neutron peak. Once calibrated for absolute neutron sensitivity, the nTOF detectors can be used to measure the yield with high accuracy. The NIF nTOF system is designed to measure neutron yield and ion temperature over 11 orders of magnitude (from 10{sup 8} to 10{sup 19}), neutron bang time in DT implosions between 10{sup 12} and 10{sup 16}, and to infer areal density for DT yields above 10{sup 12}. During the 2009 campaign, the three most sensitive neutron time-of-flight detectors were installed and used to measure the primary neutron yield and ion temperature from 25 high-convergence implosions using D{sub 2} fuel. The OMEGA yield calibration of these detectors was successfully transferred to the NIF.

• OSTI ID: 22055769
• Journal Information: Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 81, Issue 10; Other Information: (c) 2010 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0034-6748
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
ACCURACY
CALIBRATION
CONVERGENCE
DENSITY
DEUTERIUM
DOPPLER BROADENING
ICF DEVICES
IMPLOSIONS
INERTIAL CONFINEMENT
ION TEMPERATURE
NEUTRON DETECTION
NEUTRONS
PERFORMANCE
PLASMA
SENSITIVITY
SENSORS
TIME-OF-FLIGHT METHOD
TRITIUM
US NATIONAL IGNITION FACILITY
YIELDS