Bulletin of the American Physical Society
63rd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics
Volume 66, Number 13
Monday–Friday, November 8–12, 2021; Pittsburgh, PA
Session AR01: Review: Creating A Burning Plasma on the National Ignition Facility
8:00 AM–9:00 AM,
Monday, November 8, 2021
Room: Ballroom BC
Chair: Karl Krushelnick, University of Michigan
Abstract: AR01.00001 : Achieving a Burning Plasma on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) Laser*
8:00 AM–9:00 AM
Presenter:
Debra A Callahan
(Lawrence Livermore Natl Lab)
Author:
Debra A Callahan
(Lawrence Livermore Natl Lab)
Progress toward ignition has been made in steps. At each step, a combination of experimental data (including improved diagnostics), theory, and modeling is used to identify and understand the limiters in performance. New designs are developed using this understanding and generally results in an increase in performance until the next limiter dominates. This cycle has produced several physics milestones on the way to ignition. First was fuel gain, where the neutron yield exceeds the energy in the deuterium-tritium fuel1. Next was “alpha heating,” where the neutron yield is doubled due to the additional energy deposited in the fuel by alpha particle stopping2,3. Now, we have achieved the burning plasma state4. We will review the new designs and experiments and compare the results with the burning plasma criteria and metrics.
[1] O. A. Hurricane, et al., Nature 506, 343 (2014)
[2] S. Le Pape, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 245003 (2018)
[3] D. T. Casey, et al., Phys. Plasmas 25, 056308 (2018)
[4] A. B. Zylstra, O. A. Hurricane, et al. submitted to Nature (2021)
*Work performed under the auspices of the U. S. DoE by LLNL under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344
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