In order to achieve the several hundred Gbar stagnation pressures necessary for inertial confinement fusion ignition, implosion experiments on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [E. I. Moses et al., Phys. Plasmas 16, 041006 (2009)] require the compression of deuterium-tritium fuel layers by a convergence ratio as high as forty. Such high convergence implosions are subject to degradation by a range of perturbations, including the growth of small-scale defects due to hydrodynamic instabilities, as well as longer scale modulations due to radiation flux asymmetries in the enclosing hohlraum. Due to the broad range of scales involved, and also the genuinely three-dimensional (3D) character of the flow, accurately modeling NIF implosions remains at the edge of current simulation capabilities. This paper describes the current state of progress of 3D capsule-only simulations of NIF implosions aimed at accurately describing the performance of specific NIF experiments. Current simulations include the effects of hohlraum radiation asymmetries, capsule surface defects, the capsule support tent and fill tube, and use a grid resolution shown to be converged in companion two-dimensional simulations. The results of detailed simulations of low foot implosions from the National Ignition Campaign are contrasted against results for more recent high foot implosions. While the simulations suggest that low foot performance was dominated by ablation front instability growth, especially the defect seeded by the capsule support tent, high foot implosions appear to be dominated by hohlraum flux asymmetries, although the support tent still plays a significant role. For both implosion types, the simulations show reasonable, though not perfect, agreement with the data and suggest that a reliable predictive capability is developing to guide future implosions toward ignition.

A universal scaling law for the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability is validated with experimental results covering a wide range of density ratios and shock strengths. These results include the first membraneless, gas-phase, interface experiments for A Ͼ 0.5 and M Ͼ 1.5. The shock-accelerated, sinusoidal interface experiments are conducted in a vertical shock tube with a large square cross section and cover the experimental parameter space: 0.29Ͻ A Ͻ 0.95, 1.1Ͻ M Ͻ 3, and 3.1ϫ 10 4 Ͻ ReϽ 1.4ϫ 10 7 . Results provide growth-rate data for comparison with computational fluid dynamics simulation codes and verify the nondimensional time and amplitude parameters chosen for scaling are the correct ones. Correct scaling is obtained by including a growth-reduction factor that accounts for diffusion at the interface. Planar imaging techniques are used to diagnose the instability development for a nearly single-mode interface, and results are reported for eight scenarios ͑including three distinct gas pairs͒ that span the linear and nonlinear growth regimes. Images from the strongly shocked, high A experiments are the first to provide evidence of bubble-growth suppression due to shock proximity.

No abstract

No abstract

This paper reviews scientific results from the pursuit of indirect drive ignition on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and describes the program's forward looking research directions. In indirect drive on the NIF, laser beams heat an x-ray enclosure called a hohlraum that surrounds a spherical pellet. X-ray radiation ablates the surface of the pellet, imploding a thin shell of deuterium/tritium (DT) that must accelerate to high velocity (v > 350 km s −1 ) and compress by a factor of several thousand. Since 2009, substantial progress has been made in understanding the major challenges to ignition: Rayleigh Taylor (RT) instability seeded by target imperfections; and low-mode asymmetries in the hohlraum x-ray drive, exacerbated by laser-plasma instabilities (LPI). Requirements on velocity, symmetry, and compression have been demonstrated separately on the NIF but have not been achieved simultaneously. We now know that the RT instability, seeded mainly by the capsule support tent, severely degraded DT implosions from 2009-2012. Experiments using a 'high-foot' drive with demonstrated lower RT growth improved the thermonuclear yield by a factor of 10, resulting in yield amplification due to alpha particle heating by more than a factor of 2. However, large time dependent drive asymmetry in the LPI-dominated hohlraums remains unchanged, preventing further improvements. High fidelity 3D hydrodynamic calculations explain these results. Future research efforts focus on improved capsule mounting techniques and on hohlraums with little LPI and controllable symmetry. In parallel, we are pursuing improvements to the basic physics models used in the design codes through focused physics experiments.