The high velocity, high adiabat, “Bigfoot” campaign and tests of indirect-drive implosion scaling

Casey, D. T.; Thomas, C. A.; Baker, K. L.; Spears, B. K.; Hohenberger, M.; Khan, S. F.; Nora, R.; Weber, Christopher; Woods, D. T.; Hurricane, O. A.; Callahan, D. A.; Berger, R. L.; Milovich, J. L.; Patel, P. K.; Ma, T.; Pak, A.; Benedetti, L. R.; Millot, Marius; Jarrott, C.; Landen, O. L.; Bionta, R. M.; MacGowan, B. J.; Strozzi, D. J.; Stadermann, Michael; Biener, Juergen; Nikroo, A.; Goyon, C.; Izumi, N.; Nagel, S. R.; Bachmann, B.; Volegov, P. L.; Fittinghoff, D. N.; Grim, G.; Yeamans, C. B.; Johnson, M. Gatu; Frenje, J. A.; Rice, N.; Kong, C.; Crippen, J. W.; Jaquez, J.; Kangas, K. W.; Wild, C.

doi:10.1063/1.5019741

Cited by 95 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…In this and the following figures, historical data from NIF are shown from refs. 4,14,15,[19][20][21][29][30][31] , labelled by the names of those predecessor campaigns.…”

Section: Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

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Burning plasma achieved in inertial fusion

Zylstra

Hurricane

Callahan

et al. 2022

Nature

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314

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Obtaining a burning plasma is a critical step towards self-sustaining fusion energy1. A burning plasma is one in which the fusion reactions themselves are the primary source of heating in the plasma, which is necessary to sustain and propagate the burn, enabling high energy gain. After decades of fusion research, here we achieve a burning-plasma state in the laboratory. These experiments were conducted at the US National Ignition Facility, a laser facility delivering up to 1.9 megajoules of energy in pulses with peak powers up to 500 terawatts. We use the lasers to generate X-rays in a radiation cavity to indirectly drive a fuel-containing capsule via the X-ray ablation pressure, which results in the implosion process compressing and heating the fuel via mechanical work. The burning-plasma state was created using a strategy to increase the spatial scale of the capsule2,3 through two different implosion concepts4–7. These experiments show fusion self-heating in excess of the mechanical work injected into the implosions, satisfying several burning-plasma metrics3,8. Additionally, we describe a subset of experiments that appear to have crossed the static self-heating boundary, where fusion heating surpasses the energy losses from radiation and conduction. These results provide an opportunity to study α-particle-dominated plasmas and burning-plasma physics in the laboratory.

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“…In this and the following figures, historical data from NIF are shown from refs. 4,14,15,[19][20][21][29][30][31] , labelled by the names of those predecessor campaigns.…”

Section: Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…ICF experiments have already demonstrated considerable fusion performance enhancement from self-heating 14,15 , and more recent advances [19][20][21] have generated experiments with approximately 50 kJ fusion yields that were close to the burning-plasma threshold 3 . These experiments used capsules with similar inner radii, between 0.91 and 0.95 mm.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Burning plasma achieved in inertial fusion

Zylstra

Hurricane

Callahan

et al. 2022

Nature

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314

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“…We note that the inclusion of other, realistic sources of perturbation, such as the fill-tube might affect the ignition scaling. In addition, other capsule and hohlraum designs currently being explored on NIF (such as Bigfoot [12], Beryllium [39], HybridB) may be more robust to perturbations than the N161023-based design explored here. Our investigation indicates that this specific design can indeed reach energy yields of 1MJ, even in the presence of large-amplitude perturbations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Burn regimes in the hydrodynamic scaling of perturbed inertial confinement fusion hotspots

Tong¹,

McGlinchey²,

Appelbe³

et al. 2019

Nucl. Fusion

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We present simulations of ignition and burn based on the Highfoot and High-Density Carbon indirect drive designs of the National Ignition Facility for three regimes of alpha-heating -self-heating, robust ignition and propagating burn -exploring hotspot power balance, perturbations and hydrodynamic scaling. A Monte-Carlo Particle-in-Cell charged particle transport package for the radiation-magnetohydrodynamics code Chimera was developed for this purpose, using a linked-list type data structure.The hotspot power balance between alpha-heating, electron thermal conduction and radiation was investigated in 1D for the three burn regimes. The impact of perturbations on this power balance is explored in 3D using a single Rayleigh-Taylor spike. Heat flow into the perturbation from thermal conduction and alpha-heating increases by factors of ∼2 − 3, due to sharper temperature gradients and increased proximity of the cold, dense material to the main fusion regions respectively. The radiative contribution remains largely unaffected in magnitude.Hydrodynamic scaling with capsule size and laser energy of different perturbation scenarios (a short-wavelength multi-mode and a low-mode radiation asymmetry) is explored in 3D, demonstrating the differing hydrodynamic evolution of the three alpha-heating regimes. The multi-mode yield increases faster with scale factor due to more synchronous P dV compression producing higher temperatures and densities, and therefore stronger bootstrapping of alphaheating. Effects on the hydrodynamic evolution are more prominent for stronger alpha-heating regimes, and include: reduced perturbation growth due to ablation from both fire-polishing and stronger thermal conduction; sharper temperature and density gradients at the boundary; and increased hotspot pressures which further compress the shell, increase hotspot size and induce faster re-expansion. The faster expansion into regions of weak confinement is more prominent for stronger alpha-heating regimes, and can result in loss of confinement.

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“…Fast electron beam density (first row) and azimuthal self-generated magnetic field (second row) maps extracted from the REB transport simulations at = t 4 ps after the injection of the fast electrons, respectively for undriven diamond, undriven vitreous carbon and shock-heated vitreous carbon. timely interest for hot electron transport in the diamond shells used recently in ICF studies for high-adiabat capsule designs [62] . Although the hot electron energies from the long implosion drivers are much lower than in our experiment, their numbers can be important and could impair the ignition if preheating the DT fuel core.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transport of kJ-laser-driven relativistic electron beams in cold and shock-heated vitreous carbon and diamond

et al. 2020

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We report experimental results on relativistic electron beam (REB) transport in a set of cold and shock-heated carbon samples using the high-intensity kilojoule-class OMEGA EP laser. The REB energy distribution and transport were diagnosed using an electron spectrometer and x-ray fluorescence measurements from a Cu tracer buried at the rear side of the samples. The measured rear REB density shows brighter and narrower signals when the targets were shock-heated. Hybrid PIC simulations using advanced resistivity models in the target warm-dense-matter (WDM) conditions confirm this observation. We show that the resistivity response of the media, which governs the selfgenerated resistive fields, is of paramount importance to understand and correctly predict the REB transport.

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The high velocity, high adiabat, “Bigfoot” campaign and tests of indirect-drive implosion scaling

Abstract: Yield degradation in inertial-confinement-fusion implosions due to shock-driven kinetic fuel-species stratification and viscous heating

Cited by 95 publications

References 51 publications

Burning plasma achieved in inertial fusion

Burning plasma achieved in inertial fusion

Burn regimes in the hydrodynamic scaling of perturbed inertial confinement fusion hotspots

Transport of kJ-laser-driven relativistic electron beams in cold and shock-heated vitreous carbon and diamond

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