Hydrodynamic Simulations and Optical Diagnosis of a Long-Scale-Length Channeling Experiment on OMEGA EP

An experiment is planned for OMEGA EP to investigate the channeling concept proposed for fast ignition. A long-scale-length plasma is first produced using long-pulse OMEGA EP beams and then irradiated with a tightly focused, high-intensity, short-pulse ($\sim $100 ps) ``channeling'' beam. An optical probe will be employed to characterize the long-scale-length plasma using the grid image refractometry\footnote{ R. S. Craxton \textit{et al.}, Phys. Fluids B \textbf{5}, 4419 (1993).} technique and the channel formed in the underdense plasma using schlieren imaging. Two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations using \textit{SAGE} will be presented, together with ray-tracing simulations of the optical diagnostics using \textit{SAGE} profiles adjusted to include the channel predicted by particle-in-cell simulations. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Inertial Confinement Fusion under Cooperative Agreement No. DE-FC52-08NA28302.