The First Indirect Drive, High-Foot Beryllium Campaign on the National Ignition Facility

For indirect drive ICF, beryllium (Be) ablators offer a number of important advantages over carbon-based ablators, which can be used to significantly improve the target ignition margin. Recently we designed a number of modern NIF Be high-foot targets optimized for hydrodynamic stability. They employ the standard 5.75 mm gold hohlraum and allow for a range of adiabats, laser drive powers/energies, and fuel ice thicknesses. Here, we will outline the first NIF Be experimental campaign that began in August of 2014. It is based upon a low-yield (high 10$^{14}$ neutrons) but very hydrodynamically robust high-foot target driven by a 350 TW/1.4 MJ pulse and using a 130 $\mu $m DT ice layer. The goal is to obtain a near-1D implosion while quantifying Be target performance uncertainties, cross-comparing with other ablators to elucidate main limitations of our predictive capabilities, and testing superior Be ablator properties near high-foot plastic performance cliffs.