Study of direct-drive, deuterium–tritium gas-filled plastic capsule implosions using nuclear diagnostics at OMEGA

Abstract

Implosions of direct-drive, deuterium–tritium (DT) gas-filled plastic capsules are studied using nuclear diagnostics at the OMEGA laser facility [T. R. Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)]. In addition to traditional neutron measurements, comprehensive sets of spectra of deuterons, tritons, and protons elastically scattered from the fuel and shell by primary DT neutrons (“knock-on” particles) are, for the first time, obtained and used for characterizing target performance. It is shown with these measurements that, for 15-atm DT capsules with 20-μm CH shells, improvement of target performance is achieved when on-target irradiation nonuniformity is reduced. Specifically, with a two-dimensional (2D) single-color-cycle, 1-THz-bandwidth smoothing by spectral dispersion (SSD), plus polarization smoothing (PS), a primary neutron yield of ∼1×1013, a fuel areal density of ∼15 mg/cm2, and a shell areal density of ∼60 mg/cm2 are obtained; these are, respectively, ∼80%, ∼60%, and ∼35% higher than those achieved using 0.35-THz, 3-color-cycle, 2D SSD without PS. (In determining fuel areal density we assume the fuel to have equal numbers of D and T.) With full beam smoothing, implosions with moderate radial convergence (∼10–15) are shown to have ρR performance close to one-dimensional-code predictions, but a ratio of measured-to-predicted primary neutron yield of ∼0.3. Other capsules that are predicted to have much higher radial convergence (3.8-atm DT gas with 20-μm CH shell) are shown to have ρRfuel∼3 mg/cm2, falling short of prediction by about a factor of 5. The corresponding convergence ratios are similar to the values for 15-atm capsules. This indicates, not surprisingly, that the effects of mix are more deleterious for high-convergence implosions. A brief comparison of these moderate- and high-convergence implosions to those of similar deuterium–deuterium (D2) gas-filled capsules shows comparable hydrodynamic performance.