Robin Benedetti, NIF, LLNL "Observing Thermonuclear Plasmas at the National Ignition Facility"

Wednesday 31 Jan 2018, 12:00 → 13:00 US/Pacific

The National Ignition Facility is a ~1.9MJ, 192 beam laser designed to achieve inertially confined fusion (ICF) in the laboratory by imploding a small capsule of Deuterium-Tritium fuel. To achieve ignition via ICF, implosions must achieve extreme velocities (100s of times faster than a bullet) in order to produce enormous densities and temperatures (hotter and denser than the Sun's core) when the implosion stagnates. Controlling the implosion in its final phases has proven to be extremely challenging, in part because initially small perturbations grow as an implosion converges. Thus, it is vital to be able to make detailed observations of the course of an implosion with high spatial and temporal resolution — better than 10 microns and 100 ps respectively. A suite of world class neutron and x-ray diagnostics has been built to probe these extreme conditions. I will describe some of the methods used to observe ICF implosions with neutrons and x-rays, and I will specifically highlight some of the most challenging problems and state of the art solutions.