Progress in direct-drive inertial confinement fusion

¹ Laboratory for Laser Energetics, 250 East River Road, Rochester, NY 14623-1299, USA
² Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Physics, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA
³ Nuclear Research Center, Negev, Israel
⁴ Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
⁵ State University of New York – Geneseo, Geneseo, NY, USA
⁶ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA

^a e-mail: rmcc@lle.rochester.edu

Published online: 15 November 2013

Abstract

Significant progress has been made in direct-drive inertial confinement fusion research at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics since the 2009 IFSA Conference [R.L. McCrory et al., J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 244, 012004 (2010)]. Areal densities of 300mg/cm² have been measured in cryogenic target implosions with neutron yields 15% of 1-D predictions. A model of crossed-beam energy transfer has been developed to explain the observed scattered-light spectrum and laser–target coupling. Experiments show that its impact can be mitigated by changing the ratio of the laser beam to target diameter. Progress continues in the development of the polar-drive concept that will allow direct-drive–ignition experiments to be conducted on the National Ignition Facility using the indirect-drive-beam layout.