Tripled yield in direct-drive laser fusion through statistical modelling.

Focusing laser light onto a very small target can produce the conditions for laboratory-scale nuclear fusion of hydrogen isotopes. The lack of accurate predictive models, which are essential for the design of high-performance laser-fusion experiments, is a major obstacle to achieving thermonuclear ignition. Here we report a statistical approach that was used to design and quantitatively predict the results of implosions of solid deuterium-tritium targets carried out with the 30-kilojoule OMEGA laser system, leading to tripling of the fusion yield to its highest value so far for direct-drive laser fusion. When scaled to the laser energies of the National Ignition Facility (1.9 megajoules), these targets are predicted to produce a fusion energy output of about 500 kilojoules-several times larger than the fusion yields currently achieved at that facility. This approach could guide the exploration of the vast parameter space of thermonuclear ignition conditions and enhance our understanding of laser-fusion physics.

Proof-of-Principle Experiment on the Dynamic Shell Formation for Inertial Confinement Fusion.

In the dynamic-shell (DS) concept [V. N. Goncharov et al., Novel Hot-Spot Ignition Designs for Inertial Confinement Fusion with Liquid-Deuterium-Tritium Spheres, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 065001 (2020).PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.125.065001] for laser-driven inertial confinement fusion the deuterium-tritium fuel is initially in the form of a homogeneous liquid inside a wetted-foam spherical shell. This fuel is ignited using a conventional implosion, which is preceded by a initial compression of the fuel followed by its expansion and dynamic formation of a high-density fuel shell with a low-density interior. This Letter reports on a scaled-down, proof-of-principle experiment on the OMEGA laser demonstrating, for the first time, the feasibility of DS formation. A shell is formed by convergent shocks launched by laser pulses at the edge of a plasma sphere, with the plasma itself formed as a result of laser-driven compression and relaxation of a surrogate plastic-foam ball target. Three x-ray diagnostics, namely, 1D spatially resolved self-emission streaked imaging, 2D self-emission framed imaging, and backlighting radiography, have shown good agreement with the predicted evolution of the DS and its stability to low Legendre mode perturbations introduced by laser irradiation and target asymmetries.

3D Simulations Capture the Persistent Low-Mode Asymmetries Evident in Laser-Direct-Drive Implosions on OMEGA.

Spherical implosions in inertial confinement fusion are inherently sensitive to perturbations that may arise from experimental constraints and errors. Control and mitigation of low-mode (long wavelength) perturbations is a key milestone to improving implosion performances. We present the first 3D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of directly driven inertial confinement fusion implosions with an inline package for polarized crossed-beam energy transfer. Simulations match bang times, yields (separately accounting for laser-induced high modes and fuel age), hot spot flow velocities and direction, for which polarized crossed-beam energy transfer contributes to the systematic flow orientation evident in the OMEGA implosion database. Current levels of beam mispointing, imbalance, target offset, and asymmetry from polarized crossed-beam energy transfer degrade yields by more than 40%. The effectiveness of two mitigation strategies for low modes is explored.

Experimentally Inferred Fusion Yield Dependencies of OMEGA Inertial Confinement Fusion Implosions.

Statistical modeling of experimental and simulation databases has enabled the development of an accurate predictive capability for deuterium-tritium layered cryogenic implosions at the OMEGA laser [V. Gopalaswamy et al.,Nature 565, 581 (2019)10.1038/s41586-019-0877-0]. In this letter, a physics-based statistical mapping framework is described and used to uncover the dependencies of the fusion yield. This model is used to identify and quantify the degradation mechanisms of the fusion yield in direct-drive implosions on OMEGA. The yield is found to be reduced by the ratio of laser beam to target radius, the asymmetry in inferred ion temperatures from the ℓ=1 mode, the time span over which tritium fuel has decayed, and parameters related to the implosion hydrodynamic stability. When adjusted for tritium decay and ℓ=1 mode, the highest yield in OMEGA cryogenic implosions is predicted to exceed 2×10^{14} fusion reactions.

Direct-drive laser fusion: status, plans and future.

Laser-direct drive (LDD), along with laser indirect (X-ray) drive (LID) and magnetic drive with pulsed power, is one of the three viable inertial confinement fusion approaches to achieving fusion ignition and gain in the laboratory. The LDD programme is primarily being executed at both the Omega Laser Facility at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics and at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. LDD research at Omega includes cryogenic implosions, fundamental physics including material properties, hydrodynamics and laser-plasma interaction physics. LDD research on the NIF is focused on energy coupling and laser-plasma interactions physics at ignition-scale plasmas. Limited implosions on the NIF in the 'polar-drive' configuration, where the irradiation geometry is configured for LID, are also a feature of LDD research. The ability to conduct research over a large range of energy, power and scale size using both Omega and the NIF is a major positive aspect of LDD research that reduces the risk in scaling from OMEGA to megajoule-class lasers. The paper will summarize the present status of LDD research and plans for the future with the goal of ultimately achieving a burning plasma in the laboratory. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Prospects for high gain inertial fusion energy (part 2)'.

Novel Hot-Spot Ignition Designs for Inertial Confinement Fusion with Liquid-Deuterium-Tritium Spheres.

A new class of ignition designs is proposed for inertial confinement fusion experiments. These designs are based on the hot-spot ignition approach, but instead of a conventional target that is comprised of a spherical shell with a thin frozen deuterium-tritium (DT) layer, a liquid DT sphere inside a wetted-foam shell is used, and the lower-density central region and higher-density shell are created dynamically by appropriately shaping the laser pulse. These offer several advantages, including simplicity in target production (suitable for mass production for inertial fusion energy), absence of the fill tube (leading to a more-symmetric implosion), and lower sensitivity to both laser imprint and physics uncertainty in shock interaction with the ice-vapor interface. The design evolution starts by launching an ∼1-Mbar shock into a DT sphere. After bouncing from the center, the reflected shock reaches the outer surface of the sphere and the shocked material starts to expand outward. Supporting ablation pressure ultimately stops such expansion and subsequently launches a shock toward the target center, compressing the ablator and fuel, and forming a shell. The shell is then accelerated and fuel is compressed by appropriately shaping the drive laser pulse, forming a hot spot using the conventional or shock ignition approaches. This Letter demonstrates the feasibility of the new concept using hydrodynamic simulations and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the concept compared with more-traditional inertial confinement fusion designs.

Anomalous Absorption by the Two-Plasmon Decay Instability.

Radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of directly driven fusion experiments at the Omega Laser Facility predict absorption accurately when targets are driven at low overlapped laser intensity. Discrepancies appear at increased intensity, however, with higher-than-expected laser absorption on target. Strong correlations with signatures of the two-plasmon decay (TPD) instability-including half-harmonic and hard-x-ray emission-indicate that TPD is responsible for this anomalous absorption. Scattered light data suggest that up to ≈30% of the laser power reaching quarter-critical density can be absorbed locally when the TPD threshold is exceeded. A scaling of absorption versus TPD threshold parameter was empirically determined and validated using the laser-plasma simulation environment code.

Plasma Density Measurements of the Inner Shell Release.

The material release on the side opposite to the laser drive of a CH shell was probed at conditions relevant to inertial confinement fusion. The release was found to expand further with a longer scale length than that predicted by radiation-hydrodynamic simulations. The simulations show that a relaxation of the back side of the shell consistent with measurements explains the experimentally observed reduction in inertial confinement fusion implosion performance-specifically, reduced areal density at peak compression.

Rarefaction Flows and Mitigation of Imprint in Direct-Drive Implosions.

Using highly resolved 3D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations, we identify a novel mechanism by which the deleterious impact of laser imprinting is mitigated in direct-drive inertial confinement fusion. Unsupported shocks and associated rarefaction flows, commonly produced with short laser bursts, are found to reduce imprint modulations prior to target acceleration. Optimization through the choice of laser pulse with picket(s) and target dimensions may improve the stability of lower-adiabat designs, thus providing the necessary margin for ignition-relevant implosions.

Subpercent-Scale Control of 3D Low Modes of Targets Imploded in Direct-Drive Configuration on OMEGA.

Multiple self-emission x-ray images are used to measure tomographically target modes 1, 2, and 3 up to the end of the target acceleration in direct-drive implosions on OMEGA. Results show that the modes consist of two components: the first varies linearly with the laser beam-energy balance and the second is static and results from physical effects including beam mistiming, mispointing, and uncertainty in beam energies. This is used to reduce the target low modes of low-adiabat implosions from 2.2% to 0.8% by adjusting the beam-energy balance to compensate these static modes.

First Observation of Cross-Beam Energy Transfer Mitigation for Direct-Drive Inertial Confinement Fusion Implosions Using Wavelength Detuning at the National Ignition Facility.

Cross-beam energy transfer (CBET) results from two-beam energy exchange via seeded stimulated Brillouin scattering, which detrimentally reduces ablation pressure and implosion velocity in direct-drive inertial confinement fusion. Mitigating CBET is demonstrated for the first time in inertial-confinement implosions at the National Ignition Facility by detuning the laser-source wavelengths (±2.3 Å UV) of the interacting beams. We show that, in polar direct-drive, wavelength detuning increases the equatorial region velocity experimentally by 16% and alters the in-flight shell morphology. These experimental observations are consistent with design predictions of radiation-hydrodynamic simulations that indicate a 10% increase in the average ablation pressure.

First Measurements of Deuterium-Tritium and Deuterium-Deuterium Fusion Reaction Yields in Ignition-Scalable Direct-Drive Implosions.

The deuterium-tritium (D-T) and deuterium-deuterium neutron yield ratio in cryogenic inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments is used to examine multifluid effects, traditionally not included in ICF modeling. This ratio has been measured for ignition-scalable direct-drive cryogenic DT implosions at the Omega Laser Facility [T. R. Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)OPCOB80030-401810.1016/S0030-4018(96)00325-2] using a high-dynamic-range neutron time-of-flight spectrometer. The experimentally inferred yield ratio is consistent with both the calculated values of the nuclear reaction rates and the measured preshot target-fuel composition. These observations indicate that the physical mechanisms that have been proposed to alter the fuel composition, such as species separation of the hydrogen isotopes [D. T. Casey et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 075002 (2012)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.108.075002], are not significant during the period of peak neutron production in ignition-scalable cryogenic direct-drive DT implosions.

Two-Plasmon Decay Mitigation in Direct-Drive Inertial-Confinement-Fusion Experiments Using Multilayer Targets.

Multilayer direct-drive inertial-confinement-fusion targets are shown to significantly reduce two-plasmon decay (TPD) driven hot-electron production while maintaining high hydrodynamic efficiency. Implosion experiments on the OMEGA laser used targets with silicon layered between an inner beryllium and outer silicon-doped plastic ablator. A factor-of-5 reduction in hot-electron generation (>50 keV) was observed in the multilayer targets relative to pure CH targets. Three-dimensional simulations of the TPD-driven hot-electron production using a laser-plasma interaction code (lpse) that includes nonlinear and kinetic effects show good agreement with the measurements. The simulations suggest that the reduction in hot-electron production observed in the multilayer targets is primarily caused by increased electron-ion collisional damping.

Publisher's Note: Demonstration of Fuel Hot-Spot Pressure in Excess of 50 Gbar for Direct-Drive, Layered Deuterium-Tritium Implosions on OMEGA [Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 025001 (2016)].

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.025001.

Demonstration of Fuel Hot-Spot Pressure in Excess of 50 Gbar for Direct-Drive, Layered Deuterium-Tritium Implosions on OMEGA.

A record fuel hot-spot pressure P_{hs}=56±7 Gbar was inferred from x-ray and nuclear diagnostics for direct-drive inertial confinement fusion cryogenic, layered deuterium-tritium implosions on the 60-beam, 30-kJ, 351-nm OMEGA Laser System. When hydrodynamically scaled to the energy of the National Ignition Facility, these implosions achieved a Lawson parameter ∼60% of the value required for ignition [A. Bose et al., Phys. Rev. E 93, 011201(R) (2016)], similar to indirect-drive implosions [R. Betti et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 255003 (2015)], and nearly half of the direct-drive ignition-threshold pressure. Relative to symmetric, one-dimensional simulations, the inferred hot-spot pressure is approximately 40% lower. Three-dimensional simulations suggest that low-mode distortion of the hot spot seeded by laser-drive nonuniformity and target-positioning error reduces target performance.

Measurements of the Conduction-Zone Length and Mass Ablation Rate in Cryogenic Direct-Drive Implosions on OMEGA.

Measurements of the conduction-zone length (110±20 µm at t=2.8 ns), the averaged mass ablation rate of the deuterated plastic (7.95±0.3 µg/ns), shell trajectory, and laser absorption are made in direct-drive cryogenic implosions and are used to quantify the electron thermal transport through the conduction zone. Hydrodynamic simulations that use nonlocal thermal transport and cross-beam energy transfer models reproduce these experimental observables. Hydrodynamic simulations that use a time-dependent flux-limited model reproduce the measured shell trajectory and the laser absorption but underestimate the mass ablation rate by ∼10% and the length of the conduction zone by nearly a factor of 2.

Nonuniformly driven two-plasmon-decay instability in direct-drive implosions.

Half-harmonic emission spectra and images taken during directly driven implosions show that the two-plasmon decay (TPD) instability is driven nonuniformly over the target surface and that multibeam effects dominate this instability. The images show a spatially limited extent of the TPD instability. A prominent spectral feature is used to determine the electron temperature in the corona. Near threshold the temperatures agree with one-dimensional hydrodynamic predictions but exceed them by ∼10% above the TPD threshold. Two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations indicate that a significant part (∼20%) of the laser intensity must be locally absorbed by the TPD instability (i.e., by collisional damping of the electron plasma waves) to maintain these temperature islands.

Exploration of the transition from the hydrodynamiclike to the strongly kinetic regime in shock-driven implosions.

Clear evidence of the transition from hydrodynamiclike to strongly kinetic shock-driven implosions is, for the first time, revealed and quantitatively assessed. Implosions with a range of initial equimolar D3He gas densities show that as the density is decreased, hydrodynamic simulations strongly diverge from and increasingly overpredict the observed nuclear yields, from a factor of ∼2 at 3.1 mg/cm3 to a factor of 100 at 0.14 mg/cm3. (The corresponding Knudsen number, the ratio of ion mean-free path to minimum shell radius, varied from 0.3 to 9; similarly, the ratio of fusion burn duration to ion diffusion time, another figure of merit of kinetic effects, varied from 0.3 to 14.) This result is shown to be unrelated to the effects of hydrodynamic mix. As a first step to garner insight into this transition, a reduced ion kinetic (RIK) model that includes gradient-diffusion and loss-term approximations to several transport processes was implemented within the framework of a one-dimensional radiation-transport code. After empirical calibration, the RIK simulations reproduce the observed yield trends, largely as a result of ion diffusion and the depletion of the reacting tail ions.

Validation of implosion modeling through direct-drive shock timing experiments at the National Ignition Facility.

Precise modeling of shocks in inertial confinement fusion implosions is critical for obtaining the desired compression in experiments. Shock velocities and postshock conditions are determined by laser-energy deposition, heat conduction, and equations of state. This paper describes experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [E. M. Campbell and W. J. Hogan, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 41, B39 (1999)10.1088/0741-3335/41/12B/303] where multiple shocks are launched into a cone-in-shell target made of polystyrene, using laser-pulse shapes with two or three pickets and varying on-target intensities. Shocks are diagnosed using the velocity interferometric system for any reflector (VISAR) diagnostic [P. M. Celliers et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 75, 4916 (2004)0034-674810.1063/1.1807008]. Simulated and inferred shock velocities agree well for the range of intensities studied in this work. These directly-driven shock-timing experiments on the NIF provide a good measure of early-time laser-energy coupling. The validated models add to the credibility of direct-drive-ignition designs at the megajoule scale.

Demonstration of the improved rocket efficiency in direct-drive implosions using different ablator materials.

The success of direct-drive implosions depends critically on the ability to create high ablation pressures (∼100 Mbar) and accelerating the imploding shell to ignition-relevant velocities (>3.7×10(7 ) cm/s) using direct laser illumination. This Letter reports on an experimental study of the conversion of absorbed laser energy into kinetic energy of the shell (rocket efficiency) where different ablators were used to vary the ratio of the atomic number to the atomic mass. The implosion velocity of Be shells is increased by 20% compared to C and CH shells in direct-drive implosions when a constant initial target mass is maintained. These measurements are consistent with the predicted increase in the rocket efficiency of 28% for Be and 5% for C compared to a CH ablator.