Study of Self-Generated Magnetic Fields in Implosion Experiments on OMEGA

Proton radiography of directly driven inertial fusion implosions has revealed the development of filamentary electromagnetic fields in outflowing corona of plastic-shell targets.\footnote{ C. K. Li \textit{et al}., Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{100}, 225001 (2008).} To explain these experiments, the dynamics of self-generated magnetic fields that originated near the critical surface of the targets is investigated using 2-D MHD simulations. Laser imprint is considered as the source of plasma nonuniformities that generate seed fields via the thermoelectric effect. The predicted fields ($\sim $1 MG) show good agreement with the fields inferred from the experiments. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Inertial Confinement Fusion under Cooperative Agreement No. DE-FC52-08NA28302.