Thermal Behavior and Operating Requirements of IFE Direct-Drive Target

Threats, design limits and design windows for laser IFE dry wall chambers

“…Target heating from energy exchange with the background gas during injection is limited to maintain the level of symmetry and smoothness required from target physics consideration [22,23]. It is not clear yet what this limit may be but initial studies have assumed that the DT should be maintained below its triple point.…”

“…15, the design window is then extremely small, effectively ruling out the use of a chamber gas. As part of the R&D effort on target injection and survival, possible ways to make the target more thermally robust are being investigated, such as reducing the initial temperature perhaps to $14 K, allowing some phase change and/or adding an insulated foam layer on the outside of the target [23]. These would help to accommodate higher chamber gas density (with the goal of 10Õs of mTorr), thereby significantly opening up the design window for armor survival and allowing for the possibility of higher yield and/or smaller chamber.…”