Speaker
Laura Berzak Hopkins
Description
See the full Abstract at http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2018ABS/pdf/I1.201.pdf
Toward a burning plasma state using diamond ablator inertially confined
fusion (ICF) implosions on the National Ignition Facility (NIF)
L. Berzak Hopkins1, S. LePape1, L. Divol1, A. Pak1, E. Dewald1, S. Bhandarkar1, L.R.
Benedetti1, T. Bunn1, J. Biener1, J. Crippen2, D. Casey1, D. Edgell3, D. Fittinghoff1, M.
Gatu-Johnson4, C. Goyon1, S. Haan1, R. Hatarik1, M. Havre2, D. D-M. Ho1, N. Izumi1, J.
Jaquez2, S. Khan1, C. Kong2, G. Kyrala5, T. Ma1, A. J. Mackinnon1, A. MacPhee1, B.
MacGowan1, N.B. Meezan1, J. Milovich1, M. Millot1, P. Michel1, S.R. Nagel1, A. Nikroo1, P.
Patel1, J. Ralph1, J.S. Ross1, N.G. Rice2, D. Strozzi1, M. Stadermann1, P. Volegov5, C.
Yeamans1, C. Weber1, C. Wild6, D. Callahan1, O. Hurricane1, R.P.J. Town1, M.J. Edwards1
1
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, US
2
General Atomics, San Diego, CA, US
3
Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, US
4
Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Mass. Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, US
5
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, US
6
Diamond Materials GmbH, Freiburg, Germany
Producing a burning plasma in the laboratory has been a long-standing milestone for the
plasma physics community. A burning plasma is a state where alpha particle deposition from
deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion reactions is the leading source of energy input to the DT
plasma. Achieving these high thermonuclear yields in an inertial confinement fusion (ICF)
implosion requires an efficient transfer of energy from the driving source, e.g., lasers, to the
DT fuel. In indirect-drive ICF, the fuel is loaded into a spherical capsule which is placed at
the center of a cylindrical radiation enclosure, the hohlraum. Lasers enter through each end
of the hohlraum, depositing their energy in the walls where it is converted to X-rays that drive
the capsule implosion. Maintaining a spherically symmetric, stable, and efficient drive is a
critical challenge and focused ICF research effort. Our program at the National Ignition
Facility (NIF)* has steadily resolved challenges that began with controlling ablative
Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability in implosions, followed by improving hohlraum-capsule
x-ray coupling using low gas-fill hohlraums, improving control of time-dependent implosion
symmetry, and reducing target engineering feature-generated perturbations. As a result of
this program of work, our team is now poised to enter the burning plasma regime.
*This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.
