Plastic ablator ignition capsule design for the National Ignition Facility

Abstract

The National Ignition Campaign, tasked with designing and fielding targets for fusion ignition experiments on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [G. H. Miller, E. I. Moses, and C. R. Wuest, Nucl. Fusion 44, S228 (2004)], has carried forward three complementary target designs for the past several years: a beryllium ablator design, a plastic ablator design, and a high-density carbon or synthetic diamond design. This paper describes current simulations and design optimization to develop the plastic ablator capsule design as a candidate for the first ignition attempt on NIF. The trade-offs in capsule scale and laser energy that must be made to achieve a comparable ignition probability to that with beryllium are emphasized. Large numbers of one-dimensional simulations, meant to assess the statistical behavior of the target design, as well as two-dimensional simulations to assess the target’s susceptibility to Rayleigh–Taylor growth are presented.