Experimental evidence 1 indicates that shell material can be driven into the core of Omega capsule implosions on the same time scale as the initial convergent shock. It has been hypothesized that ...shock-generated temperatures at the fuel shell interface in thin exploding pusher capsules diffusively drives shell material into the gas core between the time of shock passage and bang time. We propose a method to temporally resolve and observe the evolution of shell material into the capsule core as a function of fuel shell interface temperature (which can be varied by varying the capsule shell thickness). Our proposed method uses a CD plastic capsule filled with 50 50 HT gas and diagnosed using gas Cherenkov detection (GCD) to temporally resolve both the HT "clean" and DT "mix" gamma ray burn histories. Simulations using Hydra 2 for an Omega CD-lined capsule with a sub-micron layer of the inside surface of the shell pre-mixed into a fraction of the gas region produce gamma reaction history profiles that are sensitive to the depth to which this material is mixed. An experiment to observe these differences as a function of capsule shell thickness is proposed to determine if interface mixing is consistent with thermal diffusion λii∼T2 Z2ρ at the gas shell interface. Since hydrodynamic mixing from shell perturbations, such as the mounting stalk and glue, could complicate these types of capsule-averaged temporal measurements, simulations including their effects also have been performed showing minimal perturbation of the hot spot geometry.
Several dozen high convergence inertial confinement fusion ignition experiments have now been completed on the National Ignition Facility (NIF). These include both "low foot" experiments from the ...National Ignition Campaign (NIC) and more recent "high foot" experiments. At the time of the NIC, there were large discrepancies between simulated implosion performance and experimental data. In particular, simulations over predicted neutron yields by up to an order of magnitude, and some experiments showed clear evidence of mixing of ablator material deep into the hot spot that could not be explained at the time. While the agreement between data and simulation improved for high foot implosion experiments, discrepancies nevertheless remain. This paper describes the state of detailed modelling of both low foot and high foot implosions using 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D radiation hydrodynamics simulations with HYDRA. The simulations include a range of effects, in particular, the impact of the plastic membrane used to support the capsule in the hohlraum, as well as low-mode radiation asymmetries tuned to match radiography measurements. The same simulation methodology is applied to low foot NIC implosion experiments and high foot implosions, and shows a qualitatively similar level of agreement for both types of implosions. While comparison with the experimental data remains imperfect, a reasonable level of agreement is emerging and shows a growing understanding of the high-convergence implosions being performed on NIF.
Cryogenically cooled inertial confinement fusion capsule designs are suitable for studies of reaction-in-flight (RIF) neutrons. RIF neutrons occur when energetically up-scattered ions undergo DT ...reactions with a thermal ion in the plasma, producing neutrons in the energy range 9-30 MeV. The knock-on ions lose energy as they traverse the plasma, which directly affects the spectrum of the produced RIF neutrons. Here we present measurements from the National Ignition Facility (NIF) of RIF neutrons produced in cryogenic capsules, with energies above 15 MeV. We show that the measured RIFs probe stopping under previously unexplored degenerate plasma conditions and constrain stopping models in warm dense plasma conditions.
The recently completed National Ignition Campaign on the National Ignition Facility showed significant discrepancies between 2-D simulations predictions of implosion performance and experimentally ...measured performance, particularly in thermonuclear yield. This discrepancy between simulation and observation persisted despite concerted efforts to include all of the known sources of implosion degradation within a reasonable 2-D simulation model, e.g., using measured surface imperfections and radiation drives adjusted to reproduce observed implosion trajectories. Since this simulation study was undertaken, more recent experiments have brought to light several effects that can significantly impact implosion performance, in particular large inflight long-wavelength shell asymmetries and larger than expected perturbations seeded by the capsule support tent. These effects are now being included in the simulation model and show improved agreement with observation. In addition, full-capsule 3-D simulations with resolution adequate to model the dominant unstable hydrodynamic modes are being run and show further improvements in agreement with experiment.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) relies on a suite of nuclear diagnostics to measure the neutronic output of experiments. Neutron time-of-flight (NTOF) and neutron activation diagnostics (NAD) ...provide performance metrics of absolute neutron yield and neutron spectral content: spectral width and non-thermal content, from which implosion physical quantities of temperature and scattering mass are inferred. Spatially-distributed flange- mounted NADs (FNAD) measure, with nearly identical systematic uncertainties, primary DT neutron emission to infer a whole-sky neutron field. An automated FNAD system is being developed. A magnetic recoil spectrometer (MRS) shares few systematics with comparable NTOF and NAD devices, and as such is deployed for independent measurement of the primary neutronic quantities. The gas-Cherenkov Gamma Reaction History (GRH) instrument records four energy channels of time-resolved gamma emission to measure nuclear bang time and burn width, as well as to infer carbon areal density in experiments utilizing plastic or diamond capsules. A neutron imaging system (NIS) takes two images of the neutron source, typically gated to create coregistered 13-15 MeV primary and 6-12 MeV downscattered images. The radiochemical analysis of gaseous samples (RAGS) instrument pumps target chamber gas to a chemical reaction and fractionation system configured with gamma counters, allowing measurement of radionuclides with half-lives as short as 8 seconds. Solid radiochemistry collectors (SRC) with backing NAD foils collect target debris, where activated materials from the target assembly are used as indicators of neutron spectrum content, and also serve as the primary diagnostic for nuclear forensic science experiments. Particle time-of-flight (PTOF) measures compression-bang time using DT- or DD-neutrons, as well as shock bang-time using D3He-protons for implosions with lower x-ray background. In concert, these diagnostics serve to measure the basic and advanced quantities required to understand NIF experimental results.
A new set of capabilities has been implemented in the HYDRA 2D/3D multiphysics inertial confinement fusion simulation code. These include a Monte Carlo particle transport library. It models transport ...of neutrons, gamma rays and light ions, as well as products they generate from nuclear and coulomb collisions. It allows accurate simulations of nuclear diagnostic signatures from capsule implosions. We apply it to here in a 3D simulation of a National Ignition Facility (NIF) ignition capsule which models the full capsule solid angle. This simulation contains a severely rough ablator perturbation and provides diagnostics signatures of capsule failure due to excessive instability growth.
Steady progress is being made in inertial confinement fusion experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Nonetheless, substantial further progress is still needed to reach the ultimate goal ...of fusion ignition. Closing the remaining gap will require either improving the quality of current implosions, increasing the implosion scale (and correspondingly the energy delivered by NIF), or some combination of the two. But how much of an improvement in implosion quality or energy scale is required to reach ignition? To reliably answer this question, an accurate understanding of current and past experiments is first required. Previous modeling efforts of NIF implosions have shown the need to resolve a wide range of scales (from microns to millimeters) as well as a faithful representation of the genuinely three-dimensional (3D) character of the stagnation process. Modeling NIF implosions is further complicated by the many perturbation sources that have been found to influence integrated implosion performance: flux asymmetries from the surrounding hohlraum, engineering features such as support tents and fill tubes, surface defects and contaminants, and more recently the radiation shadow cast by the fill tube on the capsule. A model including all of these effects, and with adequate resolution, challenges current computing capabilities but has recently become feasible on the largest computers. This paper reviews the status of these multi-effect, 3D simulations of NIF implosions, their comparison to experimental data, and preliminary results on scaling these simulations to the threshold of ignition on NIF.
We have derived a 3-dimensional synthetic model for NIF implosion conditions, by predicting and optimizing fits to a broad set of x-ray and nuclear diagnostics obtained on each shot. By matching ...x-ray images, burn width, neutron time-of-flight ion temperature, yield, and fuel rhor, we obtain nearly unique constraints on conditions in the hotspot and fuel in a model that is entirely consistent with the observables. This model allows us to determine hotspot density, pressure, areal density (rhor), total energy, and other ignition-relevant parameters not available from any single diagnostic. This article describes the model and its application to National Ignition Facility (NIF) tritium-hydrogen-deuterium (THD) and DT implosion data, and provides an explanation for the large yield and rhor degradation compared to numerical code predictions.
An inertial fusion implosion on the National Ignition Facility, conducted on August 8, 2021 (N210808), recently produced more than a megajoule of fusion yield and passed Lawson's criterion for ...ignition Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 075001 (2022). Here we describe the experimental improvements that enabled N210808 and present the first experimental measurements from an igniting plasma in the laboratory. Ignition metrics like the product of hot-spot energy and pressure squared, in the absence of self-heating, increased by ~ 35%, leading to record values and an enhancement from previous experiments in the hot-spot energy (~ 3×), pressure (~ 2×), and mass (~ 2×). These results are consistent with self-heating dominating other power balance terms. The burn rate increases by an order of magnitude after peak compression, and the hot-spot conditions show clear evidence for burn propagation into the dense fuel surrounding the hot spot. These novel dynamics and thermodynamic properties have never been observed on prior inertial fusion experiments.
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