Ray-based modeling of cross-beam energy transfer at caustics

Abstract

Cross-beam energy transfer (CBET) is a laser-plasma instability that significantly impacts laser energy deposition in laser-driven inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments. Radiation-hydrodynamics simulations, which are used to design and tune ICF implosions, use ray-based CBET models, but existing models require artificial multipliers to conserve energy and to obtain quantitative agreement with experiments. The discretization of the ray trajectories in traditional ray-based CBET models does not account for the rapid variation in CBET gain as rays pass through caustics. We introduce a model that allows one to treat caustics much more accurately and greatly improves energy conservation. The ray-based CBET calculations show excellent agreement with laser absorption from two-dimensional wave-based calculations (0.3% difference) and a three-dimensional 60-beam OMEGA implosion (2.4% difference) without artificial multipliers.