The National Ignition Campaign's M. J. Edwards et al., Phys. Plasmas 20, 070501 (2013) point design implosion has achieved DT neutron yields of 7.5×10(14) neutrons, inferred stagnation pressures of ...103 Gbar, and inferred areal densities (ρR) of 0.90 g/cm2 (shot N111215), values that are lower than 1D expectations by factors of 10×, 3.3×, and 1.5×, respectively. In this Letter, we present the design basis for an inertial confinement fusion capsule using an alternate indirect-drive pulse shape that is less sensitive to issues that may be responsible for this lower than expected performance. This new implosion features a higher radiation temperature in the "foot" of the pulse, three-shock pulse shape resulting in an implosion that has less sensitivity to the predicted ionization state of carbon, modestly lower convergence ratio, and significantly lower ablation Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth than that of the NIC point design capsule. The trade-off with this new design is a higher fuel adiabat that limits both fuel compression and theoretical capsule yield. The purpose of designing this capsule is to recover a more ideal one-dimensional implosion that is in closer agreement to simulation predictions. Early experimental results support our assertions since as of this Letter, a high-foot implosion has obtained a record DT yield of 2.4×10(15) neutrons (within ∼70% of 1D simulation) with fuel ρR=0.84 g/cm2 and an estimated ∼1/3 of the yield coming from α-particle self-heating.
This Letter reports on a series of high-adiabat implosions of cryogenic layered deuterium-tritium (DT) capsules indirectly driven by a "high-foot" laser drive pulse at the National Ignition Facility. ...High-foot implosions have high ablation velocities and large density gradient scale lengths and are more resistant to ablation-front Rayleigh-Taylor instability induced mixing of ablator material into the DT hot spot. Indeed, the observed hot spot mix in these implosions was low and the measured neutron yields were typically 50% (or higher) of the yields predicted by simulation. On one high performing shot (N130812), 1.7 MJ of laser energy at a peak power of 350 TW was used to obtain a peak hohlraum radiation temperature of ∼300 eV. The resulting experimental neutron yield was (2.4±0.05)×10(15) DT, the fuel ρR was (0.86±0.063) g/cm2, and the measured Tion was (4.2±0.16) keV, corresponding to 8 kJ of fusion yield, with ∼1/3 of the yield caused by self-heating of the fuel by α particles emitted in the initial reactions. The generalized Lawson criteria, an ignition metric, was 0.43 and the neutron yield was ∼70% of the value predicted by simulations that include α-particle self-heating.
Stimulated Raman scattering from multiple laser beams arranged in a cone sharing a common daughter wave is investigated for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) conditions in a inhomogeneous plasma. It ...is found that the shared electron plasma wave (EPW) process, where the lasers collectively drive the same EPW, can lead to an absolute instability when the electron density reaches a matching condition dependent on the cone angle of the laser beams. This mechanism could explain recent experimental observations of hot electrons at early times in ICF experiments, at densities well below quarter critical when two plasmon decay is not expected to occur.
The impact to fusion energy production due to the radiative loss from a localized mix in inertial confinement implosions using high density carbon capsule targets has been quantified. The radiative ...loss from the localized mix and local cooling of the reacting plasma conditions was quantified using neutron and x-ray images to reconstruct the hot spot conditions during thermonuclear burn. Such localized features arise from ablator material that is injected into the hot spot from the Rayleigh-Taylor growth of capsule surface perturbations, particularly the tube used to fill the capsule with deuterium and tritium fuel. Observations, consistent with analytic estimates, show the degradation to fusion energy production to be linearly proportional to the fraction of the total emission that is associated with injected ablator material and that this radiative loss has been the primary source of variations, of up to 1.6 times, in observed fusion energy production. Reducing the fill tube diameter has increased the ignition metric χ_{no α} from 0.49 to 0.72, 92% of that required to achieve a burning hot spot.
Ignition is needed to make fusion energy a viable alternative energy source, but has yet to be achieved. A key step on the way to ignition is to have the energy generated through fusion reactions in ...an inertially confined fusion plasma exceed the amount of energy deposited into the deuterium-tritium fusion fuel and hotspot during the implosion process, resulting in a fuel gain greater than unity. Here we report the achievement of fusion fuel gains exceeding unity on the US National Ignition Facility using a 'high-foot' implosion method, which is a manipulation of the laser pulse shape in a way that reduces instability in the implosion. These experiments show an order-of-magnitude improvement in yield performance over past deuterium-tritium implosion experiments. We also see a significant contribution to the yield from α-particle self-heating and evidence for the 'bootstrapping' required to accelerate the deuterium-tritium fusion burn to eventually 'run away' and ignite.
Alpha-particle self-heating, the process of deuterium-tritium fusion reaction products depositing their kinetic energy locally within a fusion reaction region and thus increasing the temperature in ...the reacting region, is essential for achieving ignition in a fusion system. Here, we report new inertial confinement fusion experiments where the alpha-particle heating of the plasma is dominant with the fusion yield produced exceeding the fusion yield from the work done on the fuel (pressure times volume change) by a factor of two or more. These experiments have achieved the highest yield (26 ± 0.5 kJ) and stagnation pressures (approximate220 ± 40 Gbar) of any facility-based inertial confinement fusion experiments, although they are still short of the pressures required for ignition on the National Ignition Facility (~300-400 Gbar). These experiments put us in a new part of parameter space that has not been extensively studied so far because it lies between the no-alpha-particle-deposition regime and ignition.
Laser redirection by cross-beam power transfer in a plasma is an important example of a nonlinear optics process which uses laser-plasma instabilities to one's advantage. We have demonstrated this in ...a hohlraum plasma at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. A four-wave mixing process causes laser power in multiple beams to change direction and add to the laser power of a selected beam. The process is controlled by setting the wavelength separation of the interacting laser beams. This technique provides a method to remotely re-point or combine high-powered laser beams without the need of local optical apparatus. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Ebola viruses remain a substantial threat to both civilian and military populations as bioweapons, during sporadic outbreaks, and from the possibility of accidental importation from endemic regions ...by infected individuals. Currently, no approved therapeutics exist to treat or prevent infection by Ebola viruses. Therefore, we performed an in vitro screen of Food and Drug Administration (FDA)- and ex-US-approved drugs and selected molecular probes to identify drugs with antiviral activity against the type species Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV). From this screen, we identified a set of selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs), including clomiphene and toremifene, which act as potent inhibitors of EBOV infection. Anti-EBOV activity was confirmed for both of these SERMs in an in vivo mouse infection model. This anti-EBOV activity occurred even in the absence of detectable estrogen receptor expression, and both SERMs inhibited virus entry after internalization, suggesting that clomiphene and toremifene are not working through classical pathways associated with the estrogen receptor. Instead, the response appeared to be an off-target effect where the compounds interfere with a step late in viral entry and likely affect the triggering of fusion. These data support the screening of readily available approved drugs to identify therapeutics for the Ebola viruses and other infectious diseases. The SERM compounds described in this report are an immediately actionable class of approved drugs that can be repurposed for treatment of filovirus infections.
In hohlraums for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions on the National Ignition Facility, suprathermal hot electrons, generated by laser plasma instabilities early in the laser pulse ...("picket") while blowing down the laser entrance hole (LEH) windows, can preheat the capsule fuel. Hard x-ray imaging of a Bi capsule surrogate and of the hohlraum emissions, in conjunction with the measurement of time-resolved bremsstrahlung spectra, allows us to uncover for the first time the directionality of these hot electrons and infer the capsule preheat. Data and Monte Carlo calculations indicate that for most experiments the hot electrons are emitted nearly isotropically from the LEH. However, we have found cases where a significant fraction of the generated electrons are emitted in a collimated beam directly towards the capsule poles, where their local energy deposition is up to 10× higher than the average preheat value and acceptable levels for ICF implosions. The observed "beaming" is consistent with a recently unveiled multibeam stimulated Raman scattering model P. Michel et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 055003 (2015), where laser beams in a cone drive a common plasma wave on axis. Finally, we demonstrate that we can control the amount of generated hot electrons by changing the laser pulse shape and hohlraum plasma.
PDF
