Computational Studies and Designs for Fast Ignition

Abstract

The fast ignition scheme is one of the most fascinating and feasible ignition schemes for the inertial fusion energy. At ILE Osaka University, FIREX (Fast Ignition Realization Experiment) project is in progress. Implosion experiments of the cryogenic target are scheduled in near future. There are two key issues for the fast ignition. One is controlling the implosion dynamics to form high density core plasma in non‐spherical implosion, and the other is heating the core plasma efficiently by the short pulse high intense laser. The time and space scale in the fast ignition scheme vary widely from initial laser irradiation to solid target, to relativistic laser plasma interaction and final fusion burning. The numerical simulation plays an important role in demonstrating the performance of the fast ignition, designing the targets, and optimizing laser pulse shapes for the scheme. These all the physics are desired to be self‐consistently described. In order to study these physics of FI, we have developed “Fast Ignition Integrated Interconnecting code” (FI3), which consists of collective Particle‐in‐Cell (PIC) code (FISCOF1D/2D), Relativistic Fokker‐Planck with hydro code (FIBMET), and 2‐dimensional Arbitrary‐Lagrangian‐Eulerian (ALE) radiation hydrodynamics code (PINOCO). Those codes are sophisticated in each suitable plasma parameters, and boundaries conditions and initial conditions for them are imported/exported to each other by way of DCCP, a simple and compact communication tool which enable these codes to communicate each others under executing different machines. We show the feature of the FI3 code, and numerical results of whole process of fast ignition. Individual important physics behind the FI are explained with the numerical results also.