Extracting Transport Properties of Turbulent and Magnetized Plasmas using Thomson scattering*

In conventional gases and plasmas, the coefficient of thermal conduction is given by Spitzer's theory, which assumes that heat fluxes are proportional to temperature gradients. However, experimental work which recreated astrophysical conditions at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics' (LLE) OMEGA and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) demonstrated that the presence of turbulent-dynamo-amplified magnetic fields in large magnetic Prandtl number regimes lead to an observed reduction of heat transport by at least two orders of magnitude. This effect was inferred using line-integrated X-ray emission diagnostics. This work presents new optical Thomson scattering data where time-resolved ion acoustic wave (IAW) and electron plasma wave (EPW) scattering was performed on NIF and OMEGA. Thomson scattering provides detailed information on the small-scale plasma conditions, improving the accuracy of line-integrated X-ray emission analysis. In addition, the autocorrelation analysis of the Thomson scattering data can yield information on relevant transport properties, such as thermal diffusion, furthering understanding of the mechanisms that give rise to the suppression of heat conduction.