Improving cryogenic deuterium–tritium implosion performance on OMEGA

A flexible direct-drive target platform is used to implode cryogenic deuterium–tritium (DT) capsules on the OMEGA laser [Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)]. The goal of these experiments is to demonstrate ignition hydrodynamically equivalent performance where the laser drive intensity, the...

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Veröffentlicht in:Physics of plasmas 2013-05, Vol.20 (5)
Hauptverfasser: Sangster, T. C., Goncharov, V. N., Betti, R., Radha, P. B., Boehly, T. R., Casey, D. T., Collins, T. J. B., Craxton, R. S., Delettrez, J. A., Edgell, D. H., Epstein, R., Forrest, C. J., Frenje, J. A., Froula, D. H., Gatu-Johnson, M., Glebov, Y. Yu, Harding, D. R., Hohenberger, M., Hu, S. X., Igumenshchev, I. V., Janezic, R., Kelly, J. H., Kessler, T. J., Kingsley, C., Kosc, T. Z., Knauer, J. P., Loucks, S. J., Marozas, J. A., Marshall, F. J., Maximov, A. V., McCrory, R. L., McKenty, P. W., Meyerhofer, D. D., Michel, D. T., Myatt, J. F., Petrasso, R. D., Regan, S. P., Seka, W., Shmayda, W. T., Short, R. W., Shvydky, A., Skupsky, S., Soures, J. M., Stoeckl, C., Theobald, W., Versteeg, V., Yaakobi, B., Zuegel, J. D.
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:A flexible direct-drive target platform is used to implode cryogenic deuterium–tritium (DT) capsules on the OMEGA laser [Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)]. The goal of these experiments is to demonstrate ignition hydrodynamically equivalent performance where the laser drive intensity, the implosion velocity, the fuel adiabat, and the in-flight aspect ratio (IFAR) are the same as those for a 1.5-MJ target [Goncharov et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 165001 (2010)] designed to ignite on the National Ignition Facility [Hogan et al., Nucl. Fusion 41, 567 (2001)]. The results from a series of 29 cryogenic DT implosions are presented. The implosions were designed to span a broad region of design space to study target performance as a function of shell stability (adiabat) and implosion velocity. Ablation-front perturbation growth appears to limit target performance at high implosion velocities. Target outer-surface defects associated with contaminant gases in the DT fuel are identified as the dominant perturbation source at the ablation surface; performance degradation is confirmed by 2D hydrodynamic simulations that include these defects. A trend in the value of the Lawson criterion [Betti et al., Phys. Plasmas 17, 058102 (2010)] for each of the implosions in adiabat–IFAR space suggests the existence of a stability boundary that leads to ablator mixing into the hot spot for the most ignition-equivalent designs.
ISSN:1070-664X
1089-7674
DOI:10.1063/1.4805088