2000 Annual Report
LLE’s 2000 Annual Report, which summarizes the Laboratory’s work for fiscal year 2000 (FY00), reports significant progress toward the development of the direct-drive approach to inertial confinement fusion.
Highlights of the effort include implementation of the OMEGA Cryogenic Target Handling System (CTHS), enhanced beam smoothing using polarization smoothing (PS) as well as 1-THz 2-D smoothing by spectral dispersion (SSD), experiments showing significantly improved capsule implosion performance with enhanced smoothing on OMEGA, target design calculation that predicts moderate gain (~ 30) for the NIF using the direct-drive approach, the development of energy-scaled OMEGA cryogenic capsule designs that are hydrodynamically equivalent to NIF ignition capsules, the implementation of a new technique to characterize laser beam imprinting at early times during a capsule implosion, experimental measurements of the effect of laser beam prepulses on capsule implosions, and the application of charged-particle spectroscopy to characterize fuel and shell areal densities, and fuel-shell mix in direct-drive capsule implosions.
This Annual Report includes an update on laser and optical materials technology developments within the laboratory. Research carried out on the OMEGA laser under the National Laser Users’ Facility (NLUF) Program is summarized along with that of other scientific teams from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, Nuclear Weapons Effects Testing, and Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique (France). Also included in this volume is a report on LLE’s educational programs ranging from high-school student summer internships to graduate research advanced degree programs.
Table of Contents
- Executive Summary
- Stability Analysis of Directly Driven NIF Capsules
- Initial Performance of the High-Pressure DT-Filling Portion of the Cryogenic Target Handling System
- Modeling the Temperature and Ice-Thickness Profiles Within OMEGA Cryogenic Targets
- Target Detection and Shroud Pull Sequencing for Cryogenic-Target Operations on the OMEGA System
- The Effect of Optical Prepulse on Direct-Drive Inertial Confinement Fusion Target Performance
- Design and Synthesis of Near-Infrared Absorbing Dyes for the Liquid Crystal Point-Diffraction Interferometer (LCPDI)
- OMEGA Cryogenic Target Designs
- Imprint Reduction Using an Intensity Spike in OMEGA Cryogenic Targets
- Measurement of Preheat due to Fast Electrons in Laser Implosions
- Holographic Transmission Gratings for Spectral Dispersion
- Laser Beam Smoothing Caused by the Small-Spatial-Scale B-Integral
- Three-Dimensional Modeling of Capsule Implosions in OMEGA Tetrahedral Hohlraums
- Nanoindentation Hardness of Particles Used in Magnetorheological Finishing (MRF)
- Imaging of Laser–Plasma X-Ray Emission with Charge-Injection Devices (CID’s)
- X-Ray Spectroscopic Measurements of Areal Density and Modulations of Compressed Shells in Implosion Experiments on OMEGA
- Secondary D-3 He Proton Spectra from D 2 -Filled OMEGA Targets
- Comparison of a Liquid Crystal Point-Diffraction Interferometer and a Commercial Phase-Shifting Interferometer
- Understanding the Mechanism of Glass Removal in Magnetorheological Finishing (MRF)
- Optical and Plasma Smoothing of Laser Imprinting in Targets Driven by Lasers with SSD Bandwidths up to 1 THz
- Analysis of a Direct-Drive Ignition Capsule Designed for the National Ignition Facility
- Core Performance and Mix in Direct-Drive Spherical Implosions with High Uniformity
- Secondary-Neutron-Yield Measurements by Current-Mode Detectors
- Fourier-Space Image Processing for Spherical Experiments on OMEGA
- LLE’s Summer High School Research Program
- FY00 Laser Facility Report
- National Laser Users’ Facility News
- Publications and Conference Presentations