First laser–plasma interaction and hohlraum experiments on the National Ignition Facility

Abstract

Recently the first laser–plasma interaction and hohlraum experiments have been performed at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in support of indirect drive inertial confinement fusion designs. The effects of laser beam smoothing by spectral dispersion and polarization smoothing on the intense (2 × 1015 W cm−2) beam propagation in gas-filled tubes has been studied at up to 7 mm plasma scales as found in indirect drive gas filled ignition hohlraum designs. These experiments have shown the expected full propagation without filamentation and beam break up when using full laser smoothing. In addition, vacuum hohlraums have been irradiated with laser powers up to 6 TW, 1–9 ns pulse lengths and energies up to 17 kJ to activate several diagnostics, to study the hohlraum radiation temperature scaling with the laser power and hohlraum size, and to make contact with hohlraum experiments performed at the Nova and Omega laser facilities. Subsequently, novel long laser pulse hohlraum experiments have tested models of hohlraum plasma filling and long pulse hohlraum radiation production. The validity of the plasma filling assessment using in analytical models and radiation hydrodynamics calculations with the code LASNEX has been proven in these studies. The comparison of these results with modelling will be discussed.