A feasibility study of using x-ray Thomson scattering to diagnose the in-flight plasma conditions of laser-direct-drive, DT cryogenic implosions*

Development of diagnostic tools capable of validating models used in radiation-hydrodynamic simulations is an important area of research in the pursuit of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) ignition targets. A dual-channel x-ray probe recording spatially integrated, spectrally resolved x-ray Thomson scattering (XRTS) in both the collective and noncollective regime will be presented here as a viable option. This feasibility study investigated synthetic scattering spectra for two extreme target adiabat conditions. The scattering spectra were generated using 1-D implosion simulations from the LILAC code that were post-processed with the x-ray scattering (XRS) code using SPECT3D. Two scattering setups were explored. The synthetic scattering data were post-processed with a Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) code and accurate information of the compressed DT shell's density, electron temperature and ionisation was obtained. There was found to be close agreement between the LILAC simulated results and the MCMC analysis.