Modulated recoil-deuteron spectra observed with the Magnetic Recoil neutron Spectrometer at the National Ignition Facility

The Magnetic Recoil Spectrometer (MRS) on the National Ignition Facility is used to measure the neutron spectrum from deuterium-tritium fueled inertial confinement fusion implosions via n-d elastic scattering and magnetic dispersion of recoil deuterons [1, 2]. From the MRS-determined neutron spectrum, the yield (Y_n), apparent ion temperature (T_i) and areal density (ρR) are determined. However, anomalous energy modulations in recoil deuterons have been observed in several high-yield indirect drive experiments (Y_n ~ 10¹⁶ - 10¹⁸). These observations raise concerns about their potential impact on the MRS-inferred performance metrics. Analytic calculations and particle-in-cell simulations are used to examine the possible beam-plasma instabilities, which indicate the two-stream instability as the driving mechanism behind energy modulations. Based on a statistical analysis of synthetic recoil-deuteron spectra, the modulation-induced errors are found to be within the errors of the determined Y_n, T_i and ρR values and thus do not have a significant impact on the MRS measurement.

[1] Frenje et al., RSI (2008).

[2] Casey et al., RSI (2013).