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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Abstract-
The Department of Energy is building a large
laser facility called the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory. One of the primary purposes of the
facility is to demonstrate ignition and burn in deuterium-tritium
fusion targets. Modeling and results of experiments done on smaller
lasers indicate that there is good reason to expect fusion yields as
high as 30 MJ for less than 2 MJ of input energy. A key physics issue
in the design of these targets is the growth of hydrodynamic
instabilities in the imploding shell, primarily ablatively stabilized
Rayleigh-Taylor instability and the Richtmyer-Meshkov
instability. Modeling is being done to estimate the growth of these
instabilities and the corresponding specifications on initial surface
smoothness. The modeling has been approached in various ways, with
various codes, and has been validated by comparison with experiments
on existing lasers. Results to be presented include recent simulations
done (by M. Marnak) in 3D, over a 72 by 72 degree piece of the
spherical capsule, with all relevant physics and relevant wavelengths
included in the simulation.
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