Charged-Particle Probing of X-ray–Driven Inertial-Fusion Implosions

Fusion laser all fired up

A massive laser designed to test nuclear weapons and the viability of fusion power has reached a milestone. Last week, researchers announced that they had focused the 192 lasers of the giant National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (pictured) onto a single target.
The lasers injected 0.7 megajoules of energy into the target, more than any previous machine, but still half of that needed to trigger a self-sustained fusion 'burn' of hydrogen isotopes.




Measurements of x-ray–driven implosions with charged particles have resulted in the quantitative characterization of critical aspects of indirect-drive inertial fusion. Three types of spontaneous electric fields differing in strength by two orders of magnitude, the largest being nearly one-tenth of the Bohr field, were discovered with time-gated proton radiographic imaging and spectrally resolved proton self-emission. The views of the spatial structure and temporal evolution of both the laser drive in a hohlraum and implosion properties provide essential insight into, and modelingvalidation of, x-ray–driven implosions.






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