Optimized beryllium target design for indirectly driven inertial confinement fusion experiments on the National Ignition Facility

For indirect drive inertial confinement fusion, Beryllium (Be) ablators offer a number of important advantages as compared with other ablator materials, e.g., plastic and high density carbon. In particular, the low opacity and relatively high density of Be lead to higher rocket efficiencies giving a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physics of plasmas 2014-02, Vol.21 (2), p.22701
Main Authors: Simakov, Andrei N., Wilson, Douglas C., Yi, Sunghwan A., Kline, John L., Clark, Daniel S., Milovich, Jose L., Salmonson, Jay D., Batha, Steven H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
ABLATION
Ablative materials
Backscattering
BERYLLIUM
CARBON
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
Density
Design optimization
Energy transfer
Ignition
IMPLOSIONS
INERTIAL CONFINEMENT
Inertial confinement fusion
PLASMA
Plasma physics
Plasmas (physics)
THERMONUCLEAR REACTOR MATERIALS
US NATIONAL IGNITION FACILITY
X RADIATION
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Summary:For indirect drive inertial confinement fusion, Beryllium (Be) ablators offer a number of important advantages as compared with other ablator materials, e.g., plastic and high density carbon. In particular, the low opacity and relatively high density of Be lead to higher rocket efficiencies giving a higher fuel implosion velocity for a given X-ray drive; and to higher ablation velocities providing more ablative stabilization and reducing the effect of hydrodynamic instabilities on the implosion performance. Be ablator advantages provide a larger target design optimization space and can significantly improve the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [J. D. Lindl et al., Phys. Plasmas 11, 339 (2004)] ignition margin. Herein, we summarize the Be advantages, briefly review NIF Be target history, and present a modern, optimized, low adiabat, Revision 6 NIF Be target design. This design takes advantage of knowledge gained from recent NIF experiments, including more realistic levels of laser-plasma energy backscatter, degraded hohlraum-capsule coupling, and the presence of cross-beam energy transfer.
ISSN:1070-664X
1089-7674
DOI:10.1063/1.4864331