High-Density Carbon Ablator Experiments on the National Ignition Facility

A series of experiments on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) have been preformed to measure high-density carbon (HDC) ablator performance for indirect drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF). The NIF laser was used to generate a shaped laser pulse with a peak power of 360 TW and a total energy of 1.3 MJ. The total neutron yield, ion temperature, neutron bang time and x-ray bang time were measured and compared to simulations. A deuterium-tritium filled HDC capsule recently produced a neutron yield of 1.6x10$^{\mathrm{15}}$, the current record for laser driven ICF. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 and supported by LDRD-11-ERD-075.