Role of hot electrons in shock ignition constrained by experiment at the National Ignition Facility

TY - JOUR

T1 - Role of hot electrons in shock ignition constrained by experiment at the National Ignition Facility

AU - Barlow, D.

AU - Goffrey, T.

AU - Bennett, K.

AU - Scott, R. H.H.

AU - Glize, K.

AU - Theobald, W.

AU - Anderson, K.

AU - Solodov, A. A.

AU - Rosenberg, M. J.

AU - Hohenberger, M.

AU - Woolsey, N. C.

AU - Bradford, P.

AU - Khan, M.

AU - Arber, T. D.

N1 - This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details

PY - 2022/8/23

Y1 - 2022/8/23

N2 - Shock ignition is a scheme for direct drive inertial confinement fusion that offers the potential for high gain with the current generation of laser facility; however, the benefits are thought to be dependent on the use of low adiabat implosions without laser-plasma instabilities reducing drive and generating hot electrons. A National Ignition Facility direct drive solid target experiment was used to calibrate a 3D Monte Carlo hot-electron model for 2D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of a shock ignition implosion. The α = 2.5 adiabat implosion was calculated to suffer a 35% peak areal density decrease when the hot electron population with temperature T h = 55 keV and energy E h = 13 kJ was added to the simulation. Optimizing the pulse shape can recover ∼ 1 / 3 of the peak areal density lost due to a change in shock timing. Despite the harmful impact of laser-plasma instabilities, the simulations indicate shock ignition as a viable method to improve performance and broaden the design space of near ignition high adiabat implosions.

AB - Shock ignition is a scheme for direct drive inertial confinement fusion that offers the potential for high gain with the current generation of laser facility; however, the benefits are thought to be dependent on the use of low adiabat implosions without laser-plasma instabilities reducing drive and generating hot electrons. A National Ignition Facility direct drive solid target experiment was used to calibrate a 3D Monte Carlo hot-electron model for 2D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of a shock ignition implosion. The α = 2.5 adiabat implosion was calculated to suffer a 35% peak areal density decrease when the hot electron population with temperature T h = 55 keV and energy E h = 13 kJ was added to the simulation. Optimizing the pulse shape can recover ∼ 1 / 3 of the peak areal density lost due to a change in shock timing. Despite the harmful impact of laser-plasma instabilities, the simulations indicate shock ignition as a viable method to improve performance and broaden the design space of near ignition high adiabat implosions.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85137109121&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1063/5.0097080

DO - 10.1063/5.0097080

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85137109121

SN - 1070-664X

VL - 29

JO - Physics of Plasmas

JF - Physics of Plasmas

IS - 8

M1 - 082704

ER -