Diagnosis of pusher-fuel mix in spherical implosions using x-ray spectroscopy (invited)

Abstract

Of primary concern in next generation inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosion experiments is Rayleigh–Taylor (RT) instability of the pusher-fuel interface occurring upon acceleration and deceleration of the pusher. This results in mixing of hot fuel with cold pusher material. One method of diagnosing mix in this case is to place spectroscopic dopants both in the capsule fuel region and the innermost region of the capsule wall adjacent to the fuel. As the degree of pusher/fuel mix is increased (typically through placement of controlled perturbations on the outer surface of the capsule) the pusher dopant x-ray emission increases relative to that of the fuel dopant. Experiments of this type using indirectly driven implosions have been carried out on Nova. In this paper we describe some of the important physics issues underlying spectral line formation in these targets and discuss how they are manifested in the modeling and interpretation of experimental data. The importance of radiative transfer as well as high density plasma phenomena such as continuum lowering and Stark broadening is demonstrated. We provide an overview of recent Nova hydrodynamic instability experiments and discuss how the level of instability growth implicit in a given capsule design impacts the diagnosis of mix through x-ray spectroscopy.