November 17 EEC290 Lecture 7

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is an operational multi-megajoule laser facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, CA. NIF was constructed by the Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to execute high energy-density science experiments in support of the U.S. Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP), the DOE’s energy and fundamental science missions, and the Department of Defense (DOD) and other federal offices and agencies. NIF was designed to achieve inertially confined fusion (ICF) in the laboratory by imploding a small capsule of Deuterium-Tritium fuel. To achieve ignition via ICF, implosions must achieve extreme velocities (100s of times faster than a bullet) to produce enormous densities and temperatures (hotter and denser than the Sun's core) when the implosion stagnates. Controlling the implosion in its final phases has proven to be extremely challenging, in part because initially small perturbations grow as an implosion converges. Thus, it is vital to be able to make detailed observations of the course of an implosion with high spatial and temporal resolution, better than 10 microns and 100 ps respectively. This talk will provide a brief introduction to the NIF and what measurements are needed to diagnose ICF experiments.