First indirectly driven liquid-DT filled double shell implosions at the National Ignition Facility

Double shell implosions aim to explore material mixing under fusion conditions in a volume burn geometry using high-Z metal pushers. High-Z pushers are more compressible than low-Z pushers enabling high stagnation pressure which reduces the required implosion speed while maintaining a low pusher adiabat despite strong shock heating. Additionally, the use of a small fuel mass reduces the fuel internal energy required for ignition, thus achieving stable platforms with reasonable fusion output to conduct controlled experiments. These factors make volume burn in a double shell implosion highly promising. Recently, a series of liquid-DT filled, indirectly driven, double shell implosions were conducted at the National Ignition Facility with laser drives reaching up to 1.5 MJ. These experiments achieved a maximum DT neutron yield of 1.67 × 1014 (yield—479 J), DT ion temperature of 2.6 keV, fuel areal density (ρR) of 0.15 g/cm2, and stagnation pressure of 79 Gbar. Over the course of these shots, the DT neutron yield has increased by an order of magnitude largely from improved mitigation of outer shell assembly joint driven instability growth using thicker gold plating at the assembly joint. Further performance improvements are expected by enhancing outer-to-inner shell kinetic energy transfer and refined mitigation of degradations from engineering features such as the outer shell joint, fill tube, and surface roughness.

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Publication Details

Journal
Physics of Plasmas
Published
2025-10-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0271552
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
1.87
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article

First indirectly driven liquid-DT filled double shell implosions at the National Ignition Facility

Tiffany Desjardins, L. Kot, P. J. Adrian, V. E. Fatherley et al.
1 citations
Physics of Plasmas
Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics
1.87
article

First indirectly driven liquid-DT filled double shell implosions at the National Ignition Facility

Tiffany Desjardins, L. Kot, P. J. Adrian, V. E. Fatherley, N. Hash, Brian M. Patterson, J. J. Kroll, A. Nikroo, M. Ratledge, T. M. Briggs, C. R. Danly, D. J. Stark, R. Santana, Joseph Smidt, D. D. Meyerhofer, H. J. Jorgenson, J. L. Kline, M. S. Freeman, C. Shuldberg, C. H. Wilde, J. F. Dowd, K. Sequoia, R. H. Dwyer, Bradley T. Wolfe, V. Geppert-Kleinrath, Ryan Lester, Mora Durocher, Elizabeth Merritt, T. E. Quintana, P. Donovan, S. D. Bhandarkar, R. L. Scott, Diego Lonardoni, H. Huang, S. Palaniyappan, Blake Wetherton, N. Roskopf, Paul Keiter, Z. L. Mohamed, Ryan Sacks, Alexander Rasmus, Eric Loomis, K. D. Meaney, Margaret Huff, Hermann Geppert-Kleinrath, Samuel C. Stringfield, B. M. Haines, W. Sweet, A. C. Hayes, D. W. Schmidt, N. Orsi, Chun-Shang Wong, G. Rusev, J. R. Murray, Saba Goodarzi, J. W. Crippen, W. Daughton, C. Choate, D. S. Montgomery, Nikolaus Christiansen, Joshua Sauppe, H. F. Robey, Irina Sagert, J. J. Kuczek, H. Xu, Gary Saavedra, Sara Negussie, A. Satsangi, Yong Ho Kim
article en
1 citations

Abstract

Double shell implosions aim to explore material mixing under fusion conditions in a volume burn geometry using high-Z metal pushers. High-Z pushers are more compressible than low-Z pushers enabling high stagnation pressure which reduces the required implosion speed while maintaining a low pusher adiabat despite strong shock heating. Additionally, the use of a small fuel mass reduces the fuel internal energy required for ignition, thus achieving stable platforms with reasonable fusion output to conduct controlled experiments. These factors make volume burn in a double shell implosion highly promising. Recently, a series of liquid-DT filled, indirectly driven, double shell implosions were conducted at the National Ignition Facility with laser drives reaching up to 1.5 MJ. These experiments achieved a maximum DT neutron yield of 1.67 × 1014 (yield—479 J), DT ion temperature of 2.6 keV, fuel areal density (ρR) of 0.15 g/cm2, and stagnation pressure of 79 Gbar. Over the course of these shots, the DT neutron yield has increased by an order of magnitude largely from improved mitigation of outer shell assembly joint driven instability growth using thicker gold plating at the assembly joint. Further performance improvements are expected by enhancing outer-to-inner shell kinetic energy transfer and refined mitigation of degradations from engineering features such as the outer shell joint, fill tube, and surface roughness.

Physics of PlasmasVol. 32(10)
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (US), Los Alamos National Laboratory (US), General Atomics (United States) (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 11%
Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics
1.87
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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