Study of fast ignition target design for ignition and burning experiments

Abstract

For the fast ignition of laser fusion, a reliable target design is required for an ignition scale target. This paper shows the first optimized target design for the implosion phase of fast ignition, which is scalable to larger targets. The requirements from the heating process are taken account. In conclusion, a target can be highly compressed using multi-step laser pulse irradiation to a solid spherical target with an inserted gold cone. In an 8 kJ scale implosion, the maximum areal density of deuterium–tritium fuel reaches 0.39 g cm−2 according to 2D simulation results, which is 62% of the case without the cone. Based on the similarity rule, we estimate that the requirement of the implosion laser energy for ignition scale targets (ρRmax =1.0 g cm−2) is 135 kJ.