1. Distortions in Charged-Particle Images of Laser Direct-Drive Inertial Confinement Fusion Implosions
- Author
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Heuer, P. V., Peebles, J. L., Kunimune, J., Rinderknecht, H. G., Davies, J. R., Gopalaswamy, V., Frelier, J., Scott, M., Roberts, J., Brannon, B., McClow, H., Fairbanks, R., Regan, S. P., Frenje, J. A., Johnson, M. Gatu, Séguin, F. H., Crilly, A. J., Appelbe, B. D., Farrell, M., and Stutz, J.
- Subjects
Physics - Plasma Physics - Abstract
Energetic charged particles generated by inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions encode information about the spatial morphology of the hot-spot and dense fuel during the time of peak fusion reactions. The knock-on deuteron imager (KoDI) was developed at the Omega Laser Facility to image these particles in order to diagnose low-mode asymmetries in the hot-spot and dense fuel layer of cryogenic deuterium--tritium ICF implosions. However, the images collected are distorted in several ways that prevent reconstruction of the deuteron source. In this paper we describe these distortions and a series of attempts to mitigate or compensate for them. We present several potential mechanisms for the distortions, including a new model for scattering of charged particles in filamentary electric or magnetic fields surrounding the implosion. A novel particle-tracing methodology is developed and utilized to create synthetic KoDI data based on the filamentary field model that reproduces the main experimentally observed image distortions. We conclude with a discussion of the outlook for KoDI, and potential considerations for other charged-particle diagnostics.
- Published
- 2024