Three-Dimensional Simulations of the Deceleration Phase of Inertial Fusion Implosions

The three-dimensional radiation--hydrodynamics code \textit{DEC3D} has been developed to model the deceleration phase of direct-drive inertial confinement fusion implosions. The code uses the approximate Riemann solver on a moving mesh to achieve high resolution near discontinuities. The domain decomposition parallelization strategy is implemented to maintain high computation efficiency for the 3-D calculation through message passing interface. The implicit thermal diffusion is solved by the parallel successive-over-relaxation iteration. Results from 3-D simulations of low-mode Rayleigh--Taylor instability are presented and compared with 2-D results. A systematic comparison of yields, pressures, temperatures, and areal densities between 2-D and 3-D is carried out to determine the additional degradation in target performance caused by the three-dimensionality of the nonuniformities. This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration under Award Number DE-NA0001944 and DE-FC02-04ER54789 (Fusion Science Center).