Progress of the US DOE project on Kinetic IFE Simulations at Multiscale with Exascale Technology (KISMET)

The path towards a future IFE Fusion Pilot Plant (FPP) requires further improvement of the modeling tools, as recognized by the US IFE community in the 2023 US DOE IFE Basic Research Needs (BRN) report. The report emphasized the need to (a) develop computational tools “capable of simulating kinetic effects in thermal and magnetized plasmas,” (b) “accurately model and enable control of Laser-Plasma Instabilities (LPI) in IFE-relevant regimes,” (c) “take advantage of and spur emerging technologies (exascale computing,..),” and (d) “develop modern simulation tools that leverage heterogeneous hardware to accelerate the path towards reliable IFE designs”. In response, the multi-institution US DOE FES SciDAC project KISMET is leveraging the Particle-In-Cell (PIC) code WarpX, initially developed under the US DOE Exascale Computing Project. Via further development and use of this next-generation capability for simulating kinetic effects in IFE-relevant thermal plasmas, the goal is to advance the understanding of the impact of kinetic effects on critical stages of IFE target physics – from the driver-target coupling to the compression and burn stages. We will present the project and the progress along the various thrusts.