Energy Coupling and LPI Dependencies in MagLIF Pre-Heat
ORAL
Abstract
The Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion (MagLIF) program at Sandia National Laboratories is pursues magneto-inertial fusion concept on the Z-Accelerator. It involves pre-heating the deuterium fuel with the Z-Beamlet laser. In order to optimize pre-heat, dedicated laser-plasma studies at the Pecos target chamber are performed to develop an ideal laser configuration. Besides the general goal of increasing coupled energy, the experiments put a specific focus on losses from laser plasma instabilities (LPI). We present insights from varying fill density, fill gas (deuterium vs.~helium), and laser pulse shape. For the latter, we show the results of varying the gap between pre-pulse that evaporates the window of the laser-entrance-hole(LEH)and the main pulse that heats the fuel.
*Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.
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