Foam-buffered spherical implosions at 527 nm

Creation of a low density, high temperature plasma buffer between the absorption and ablation layers of a directly driven inertial confinement fusion implosion capsule has been proposed as a means to reduce “early time” imprint from laser nonuniformities. This thermal smoothing blanket might be crea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physics of plasmas 1997-05, Vol.4 (5), p.1379-1384
Main Authors: Watt, R. G., Wilson, D. C., Chrien, R. E., Hollis, R. V., Gobby, P. L., Mason, R. J., Kopp, R. A., Lerche, R. A., Kalantar, D. H., MacGowan, B., Nelson, M. B., Phillips, T., McKenty, P. W., Willi, O.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Creation of a low density, high temperature plasma buffer between the absorption and ablation layers of a directly driven inertial confinement fusion implosion capsule has been proposed as a means to reduce “early time” imprint from laser nonuniformities. This thermal smoothing blanket might be created from a low density foam layer wrapped around the deuterium–tritium filled microballoon. Preliminary spherical implosion tests of this concept using a polystyrene foam layer surrounding a glass microballoon were performed at the Nova laser [Rev. Sci. Instrum. 57, 2101 (1986)], using a 527 nm drive wavelength. Comparison of capsule yield and imploded core symmetry showed promising improvements in overall target performance, relative to one-dimensional undegraded hydrodynamic simulations, when the foam-buffer layer was present.
ISSN:1070-664X
1089-7674
DOI:10.1063/1.872568