Probing the 3-D Morphology of the Hot Spot and Shell of Warm ICF Implosions at OMEGA Using Knock-On Deuteron Imaging
Justin Kunimune, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Knock-on deuteron imaging is a diagnostic technique that is being implemented at the OMEGA laser facility to diagnose the morphology of an inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosion. It utilizes the fact that some of the neutrons from deuterium-tritium (DT)-fusion reactions generated in the central hot-spot of an ICF implosion elastically scatter deuterons as they traverse the surrounding shell layer. The energy of these “knock-on” deuterons depends on the scattering angle, where the most energetic deuterons are forward-scattered and probe the shape of the central hot-spot, while lower-energy deuterons are made by side-scattering or slowing down in the fuel and carry information about the distribution of the dense DT-fuel layer surrounding the hot-spot. The first proof-of-concept tests have been conducted successfully. In these tests, three penumbral imagers with different views on an implosion recorded deuterons scattered from the dense shell of DT-gas-filled deuterated plastic shell implosions with prescribed offsets. Data from these experiments are presented here, along with novel analysis techniques to reconstruct the deuteron source and implosion morphology from the data. This new diagnostic capability will allow us to study asymmetries in unprecedented detail at OMEGA.
This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy NNSA MITCenter-of-Excellence under Contract DE-NA0003868, the NNSA LRGF under ContractDE-NA0003960, and LLE under Contract 417532G/UR FAO GR510907.
Authors: J. Kunimune1, P. Heuer2, P. Adrian1, H. Rinderknecht2, M. Gatu Johnson1, F. Séguin1, S. Regan2, D. Casey3, J. Frenje1
1Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
2Laboratory for Laser Energetics, USA
3Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA
Abstract Author(s): (see above entries)