Extrapolation of Experiments from OMEGA to the National Ignition Facility Beyond Hydroscaling

Extrapolating experimental performance from OMEGA to the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is critical to make the case for future high-performance direct-drive NIF implosions. Typically, hydrodynamic scaling is invoked to design NIF experiments or predict NIF target performance. Several additional factors are important for increasing the accuracy of this extrapolation, including the physics of laser–plasma interactions and the effect of the different beam arrangement on OMEGA versus the NIF. Simulations that study this extrapolation beyond hydrodynamic scaling, using state-of-the-art models of laser drive (cross-beam energy transfer and nonlocal heat conduction) and beam geometry are presented. Currently, experiments involving radiography of ablatively driven shells and of shocks in solid spheres are used to quantify laser drive in hydrodynamically scaled experiments on OMEGA and the NIF. This talk will present simulations comparing designs and experimental results across the two facilities in the context of these two experiments.