Development and modeling of a polar-direct-drive exploding pusher platform at the National Ignition Facility
Abstract
High-intensity laser facilities, such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF), allow the experimental investigation of plasmas under extreme, high-energy-density conditions. Motivated by validating models for collisional heat-transfer processes in high-energy-density plasmas, we have developed an exploding pusher platform for use at the NIF in the polar-direct-drive configuration. The baseline design employs a 3 mm-diameter capsule, an 18 μm-thick CH ablator, and Ar-doped D2 gas to achieve several keV electron-ion temperature separations with relatively low convergence ratios. In an initial series of shots at the NIF—N160920–003, -005, and N160921–001—the ratio of the laser intensity at different polar angles was varied to optimize the symmetry of the implosion. In this work, we summarize experimental results from the shot series and present pre- and post-shot analysis. Although the polar-direct-drive configuration is inherently asymmetric, we successfully tuned a post-shot 1D model to a set of key implosion performance metrics. The post-shot model has proven effective for extrapolating capsule performance to higher incident laser drive. Overall, the simplicity of the platform and the efficacy of the post-shot 1D model make the polar-direct-drive exploding pusher platform attractive for a variety of applications beyond the originally targeted study of collisional processes in high-energy-density plasmas.
- Authors:
-
more »
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Berkshire (United Kingdom)
- Univ. of Rochester, NY (United States)
- Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
- General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1566028
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1462156
- Report Number(s):
- LLNL-JRNL-744974
Journal ID: ISSN 1070-664X; 899581; TRN: US2000961
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC52-07NA27344; PECASE
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Physics of Plasmas
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 25; Journal Issue: 7; Journal ID: ISSN 1070-664X
- Publisher:
- American Institute of Physics (AIP)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
Citation Formats
Ellison, C. Leland, Whitley, Heather D., Brown, Colin R. D., Copeland, Sean R., Garbett, Warren J., Le, Hai P., Schneider, Marilyn B., Walters, Zachary B., Chen, Hui, Castor, John I., Craxton, R. Stephen, Gatu Johnson, Maria, Garcia, Emma M., Graziani, Frank R., Kemp, G. Elijah, Krauland, Christine M., McKenty, Patrick W., Lahmann, Brandon, Pino, Jesse E., Rubery, Michael S., Scott, Howard A., Shepherd, Ronnie, and Sio, Hong. Development and modeling of a polar-direct-drive exploding pusher platform at the National Ignition Facility. United States: N. p., 2018.
Web. doi:10.1063/1.5025724.
Ellison, C. Leland, Whitley, Heather D., Brown, Colin R. D., Copeland, Sean R., Garbett, Warren J., Le, Hai P., Schneider, Marilyn B., Walters, Zachary B., Chen, Hui, Castor, John I., Craxton, R. Stephen, Gatu Johnson, Maria, Garcia, Emma M., Graziani, Frank R., Kemp, G. Elijah, Krauland, Christine M., McKenty, Patrick W., Lahmann, Brandon, Pino, Jesse E., Rubery, Michael S., Scott, Howard A., Shepherd, Ronnie, & Sio, Hong. Development and modeling of a polar-direct-drive exploding pusher platform at the National Ignition Facility. United States. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5025724
Ellison, C. Leland, Whitley, Heather D., Brown, Colin R. D., Copeland, Sean R., Garbett, Warren J., Le, Hai P., Schneider, Marilyn B., Walters, Zachary B., Chen, Hui, Castor, John I., Craxton, R. Stephen, Gatu Johnson, Maria, Garcia, Emma M., Graziani, Frank R., Kemp, G. Elijah, Krauland, Christine M., McKenty, Patrick W., Lahmann, Brandon, Pino, Jesse E., Rubery, Michael S., Scott, Howard A., Shepherd, Ronnie, and Sio, Hong. Mon .
"Development and modeling of a polar-direct-drive exploding pusher platform at the National Ignition Facility". United States. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5025724. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1566028.
@article{osti_1566028,
title = {Development and modeling of a polar-direct-drive exploding pusher platform at the National Ignition Facility},
author = {Ellison, C. Leland and Whitley, Heather D. and Brown, Colin R. D. and Copeland, Sean R. and Garbett, Warren J. and Le, Hai P. and Schneider, Marilyn B. and Walters, Zachary B. and Chen, Hui and Castor, John I. and Craxton, R. Stephen and Gatu Johnson, Maria and Garcia, Emma M. and Graziani, Frank R. and Kemp, G. Elijah and Krauland, Christine M. and McKenty, Patrick W. and Lahmann, Brandon and Pino, Jesse E. and Rubery, Michael S. and Scott, Howard A. and Shepherd, Ronnie and Sio, Hong},
abstractNote = {High-intensity laser facilities, such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF), allow the experimental investigation of plasmas under extreme, high-energy-density conditions. Motivated by validating models for collisional heat-transfer processes in high-energy-density plasmas, we have developed an exploding pusher platform for use at the NIF in the polar-direct-drive configuration. The baseline design employs a 3 mm-diameter capsule, an 18 μm-thick CH ablator, and Ar-doped D2 gas to achieve several keV electron-ion temperature separations with relatively low convergence ratios. In an initial series of shots at the NIF—N160920–003, -005, and N160921–001—the ratio of the laser intensity at different polar angles was varied to optimize the symmetry of the implosion. In this work, we summarize experimental results from the shot series and present pre- and post-shot analysis. Although the polar-direct-drive configuration is inherently asymmetric, we successfully tuned a post-shot 1D model to a set of key implosion performance metrics. The post-shot model has proven effective for extrapolating capsule performance to higher incident laser drive. Overall, the simplicity of the platform and the efficacy of the post-shot 1D model make the polar-direct-drive exploding pusher platform attractive for a variety of applications beyond the originally targeted study of collisional processes in high-energy-density plasmas.},
doi = {10.1063/1.5025724},
journal = {Physics of Plasmas},
number = 7,
volume = 25,
place = {United States},
year = {2018},
month = {7}
}
Web of Science
Figures / Tables:

Works referenced in this record:
Thermo-diffusion in inertially confined plasmas
journal, April 2014
- Kagan, Grigory; Tang, Xian-Zhu
- Physics Letters A, Vol. 378, Issue 21
The NIF x-ray spectrometer calibration campaign at Omega
journal, November 2014
- Pérez, F.; Kemp, G. E.; Regan, S. P.
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 85, Issue 11
The stability of multiple-shell ICF targets
journal, November 1980
- Roberts, P. D.; Rose, S. J.; Thompson, P. C.
- Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, Vol. 13, Issue 11
Indications of Strongly Flux-Limited Electron Thermal Conduction in Laser-Target Experiments
journal, March 1975
- Malone, R. C.; McCrory, R. L.; Morse, R. L.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 34, Issue 12
Diffusion-dominated mixing in moderate convergence implosions
journal, June 2018
- Zylstra, A. B.; Hoffman, N. M.; Herrmann, H. W.
- Physical Review E, Vol. 97, Issue 6
Analytic expressions for electron-ion temperature equilibration rates from the Lenard-Balescu equation
journal, January 2018
- Scullard, Christian R.; Serna, Susana; Benedict, Lorin X.
- Physical Review E, Vol. 97, Issue 1
Electro-diffusion in a plasma with two ion species
journal, August 2012
- Kagan, Grigory; Tang, Xian-Zhu
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 19, Issue 8
Numerical simulation of thin-shell direct drive DHe3-filled capsules fielded at OMEGA
journal, July 2012
- Miles, A. R.; Chung, H. -K.; Heeter, R.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 19, Issue 7
A spatially resolved ion temperature diagnostic for the National Ignition Facility
journal, October 2008
- Grim, G. P.; Finch, J. P.; King, N. S. P.
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 79, Issue 10
The production spectrum in fusion plasmas
journal, February 2011
- Appelbe, B.; Chittenden, J.
- Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, Vol. 53, Issue 4
Point design targets, specifications, and requirements for the 2010 ignition campaign on the National Ignition Facility
journal, May 2011
- Haan, S. W.; Lindl, J. D.; Callahan, D. A.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 18, Issue 5
Large-eddy and unsteady RANS simulations of a shock-accelerated heavy gas cylinder
journal, April 2015
- Morgan, B. E.; Greenough, J. A.
- Shock Waves, Vol. 26, Issue 4
Ionic transport in high-energy-density matter
journal, April 2016
- Stanton, Liam G.; Murillo, Michael S.
- Physical Review E, Vol. 93, Issue 4
The effects of laser absorption on direct-drive capsule experiments at OMEGA
journal, April 2012
- Dodd, E. S.; Benage, J. F.; Kyrala, G. A.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 19, Issue 4
Observation of a Reflected Shock in an Indirectly Driven Spherical Implosion at the National Ignition Facility
journal, June 2014
- Le Pape, S.; Divol, L.; Berzak Hopkins, L.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 112, Issue 22
Revised Knudsen-layer reduction of fusion reactivity
journal, December 2013
- Albright, B. J.; Molvig, Kim; Huang, C. -K.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 20, Issue 12
Development of a polar direct-drive platform for studying inertial confinement fusion implosion mix on the National Ignition Facility
journal, May 2013
- Schmitt, Mark J.; Bradley, Paul A.; Cobble, James A.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 20, Issue 5
Electron-ion equilibration in a partially degenerate plasma
journal, October 1974
- Brysk, H.
- Plasma Physics, Vol. 16, Issue 10
Diffusion coefficients for stellar plasmas
journal, May 1986
- Paquette, C.; Pelletier, C.; Fontaine, G.
- The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 61
Measuring x-ray burn history with the Streaked Polar Instrumentation for Diagnosing Energetic Radiation (SPIDER) at the National Ignition Facility (NIF)
conference, October 2012
- Khan, S. F.; Bell, P. M.; Bradley, D. K.
- SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, SPIE Proceedings
Polar-direct-drive simulations and experiments
journal, May 2006
- Marozas, J. A.; Marshall, F. J.; Craxton, R. S.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 13, Issue 5
Purgatorio—a new implementation of the Inferno algorithm
journal, May 2006
- Wilson, B.; Sonnad, V.; Sterne, P.
- Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, Vol. 99, Issue 1-3
Polar direct drive on the National Ignition Facility
journal, May 2004
- Skupsky, S.; Marozas, J. A.; Craxton, R. S.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 11, Issue 5, p. 2763-2770
Equation of state, occupation probabilities and conductivities in the average atom Purgatorio code
journal, May 2007
- Sterne, P. A.; Hansen, S. B.; Wilson, B. G.
- High Energy Density Physics, Vol. 3, Issue 1-2
Molecular dynamics simulations and generalized Lenard-Balescu calculations of electron-ion temperature equilibration in plasmas
journal, October 2012
- Benedict, Lorin X.; Surh, Michael P.; Castor, John I.
- Physical Review E, Vol. 86, Issue 4
Polar-direct-drive experiments on the National Ignition Facilitya)
journal, May 2015
- Hohenberger, M.; Radha, P. B.; Myatt, J. F.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 22, Issue 5
A study of ALE simulations of Rayleigh–Taylor instability
journal, March 2001
- Darlington, Rebecca M.; McAbee, Thomas L.; Rodrigue, Garry
- Computer Physics Communications, Vol. 135, Issue 1
A review on ab initio studies of static, transport, and optical properties of polystyrene under extreme conditions for inertial confinement fusion applications
journal, May 2018
- Collins, L. A.; Boehly, T. R.; Ding, Y. H.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 25, Issue 5
Understanding reconstructed Dante spectra using high resolution spectroscopy
journal, August 2016
- May, M. J.; Weaver, J.; Widmann, K.
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 87, Issue 11
Laser Compression of Matter to Super-High Densities: Thermonuclear (CTR) Applications
journal, September 1972
- Nuckolls, John; Wood, Lowell; Thiessen, Albert
- Nature, Vol. 239, Issue 5368, p. 139-142
Backscatter measurements for NIF ignition targets (invited)
journal, October 2010
- Moody, J. D.; Datte, P.; Krauter, K.
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 81, Issue 10
Neutron time-of-flight signals from expanding or contracting spherical sources
journal, January 1997
- Murphy, T. J.; Chrien, R. E.; Klare, K. A.
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 68, Issue 1
Direct drive: Simulations and results from the National Ignition Facility
journal, April 2016
- Radha, P. B.; Hohenberger, M.; Edgell, D. H.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 23, Issue 5
The National Ignition Facility
journal, December 2004
- Miller, George H.
- Optical Engineering, Vol. 43, Issue 12
Dante soft x-ray power diagnostic for National Ignition Facility
journal, October 2004
- Dewald, E. L.; Campbell, K. M.; Turner, R. E.
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 75, Issue 10
Exploding pusher performance − A theoretical model
journal, January 1979
- Rosen, M. D.; Nuckolls, J. H.
- Physics of Fluids, Vol. 22, Issue 7
Capsule implosions for continuum x-ray backlighting of opacity samples at the National Ignition Facility
journal, June 2017
- Opachich, Y. P.; Heeter, R. F.; Barrios, M. A.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 24, Issue 6
A Comparison of Three Methods for Selecting Values of Input Variables in the Analysis of Output from a Computer Code
journal, May 1979
- McKay, M. D.; Beckman, R. J.; Conover, W. J.
- Technometrics, Vol. 21, Issue 2
Knudsen Layer Reduction of Fusion Reactivity
journal, August 2012
- Molvig, Kim; Hoffman, Nelson M.; Albright, B. J.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 109, Issue 9
Cretin—a radiative transfer capability for laboratory plasmas
journal, October 2001
- Scott, Howard A.
- Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, Vol. 71, Issue 2-6
Investigation of ion kinetic effects in direct-drive exploding-pusher implosions at the NIF
journal, December 2014
- Rosenberg, M. J.; Zylstra, A. B.; Séguin, F. H.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 21, Issue 12
Laser irradiance scaling in polar direct drive implosions on the National Ignition Facility
journal, September 2015
- Murphy, T. J.; Krasheninnikova, N. S.; Kyrala, G. A.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 22, Issue 9
Hydrodynamics of thermal self‐focusing in laser plasmas
journal, July 1984
- Craxton, R. S.; McCrory, R. L.
- Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 56, Issue 1
Full aperture backscatter station measurement system on the National Ignition Facility
journal, October 2004
- Bower, D. E.; McCarville, T. J.; Alvarez, S. S.
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 75, Issue 10
Polar-drive designs for optimizing neutron yields on the National Ignition Facility
journal, August 2008
- Cok, A. M.; Craxton, R. S.; McKenty, P. W.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 15, Issue 8
Approximate models for the ion-kinetic regime in inertial-confinement-fusion capsule implosions
journal, May 2015
- Hoffman, Nelson M.; Zimmerman, George B.; Molvig, Kim
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 22, Issue 5
Path integral Monte Carlo simulations of dense carbon-hydrogen plasmas
journal, March 2018
- Zhang, Shuai; Militzer, Burkhard; Benedict, Lorin X.
- The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 148, Issue 10
A Comparison of Three Methods for Selecting Values of Input Variables in the Analysis of Output From a Computer Code
journal, February 2000
- Mckay, M. D.; Beckman, R. J.; Conover, W. J.
- Technometrics, Vol. 42, Issue 1
The National Ignition Facility
conference, May 2004
- Miller, George H.
- Lasers and Applications in Science and Engineering, SPIE Proceedings
Electro-diffusion in a plasma with two ion species
text, January 2012
- Kagan, Grigory; Tang, Xian-Zhu
- arXiv
First-principles Equation of State and Shock Compression Predictions of Warm Dense Hydrocarbons
text, January 2017
- Zhang, Shuai; Driver, Kevin P.; Soubiran, François
- arXiv
Analytic expressions for electron-ion temperature equilibration rates from the Lenard-Balescu equation
text, January 2017
- Scullard, Christian R.; Serna, Susana; Benedict, Lorin X.
- arXiv
Works referencing / citing this record:
Linear response of a Hall magnetic drift wave for verification of Hall MHD algorithms
journal, July 2019
- Farmer, W. A.; Ellison, C. L.; Hammer, J. H.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 26, Issue 7
Exploring the crossover between high-energy-density plasma and ultracold neutral plasma physics
journal, October 2019
- Bergeson, Scott D.; Baalrud, Scott D.; Ellison, C. Leland
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 26, Issue 10
Theoretical and experimental investigation of the equation of state of boron plasmas
journal, August 2018
- Zhang, Shuai; Militzer, Burkhard; Gregor, Michelle C.
- Physical Review E, Vol. 98, Issue 2
Figures / Tables found in this record: