First Intended Experiment for Impact Fusion Ignition

ORAL

Abstract

Sufficient suppression of the Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability not only increases compressed density, but it may also revive an old ignition idea: High velocity implosion with 1000 km/s may configure a hot-spark without a surrounding cold main fuel and thereby ignite at a very low laser energy of 30-100 kJ. A major criticism of no pathway towards high gain may be solved by the impact fusion ignition (IFI) configuration [M. Murakami, NIM-A 05]. In this scheme, a main fuel is first imploded, whereas the ignition is made by impact collision of the second partial shell with high velocity of 1000 km/s. The first intended experiment using a RT suppressed target has demonstrated the velocity of 600 km/s. We plan to employ several RT suppression schemes in attempts to reach higher velocities using the HIPER and NIKE lasers.

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Authors

  • H. Azechi

    • Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University

  • M. Murakami

  • H. Nagatomo

  • T. Sakaiya

  • S. Fujioka

  • H. Shiraga

  • M. Nakai

  • K. Shigemori

  • A. Sunahara

    • Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University

  • S. Obenschain

  • M. Karasik

  • J. Gardner

  • J. Bates

  • D. Colombant

  • J. Weaver

    • Naval Research Laboratory

  • Y. Aglitskiy

    • SAIC