The National Ignition Facility

The National Ignition Facility : Studying the Stars in the Laboratory

The National Ignition Facility, construction for which will be completed in March, 2009, will be the highest energy laser ever built. The high temperatures and densities it will produce will enable a number of experiments in inertial confinement fusion and stockpile stewardship, as well as in nuclear astrophysics, X-ray astronomy, laser-plasma interactions, hydrodynamics, and planetary science.

Polar Direct Drive on the National Ignition Facility

212 LLE Review, Volume 96 Introduction Recent advances in direct-drive target design have enhanced target performance beyond that achieved in the original baseline ignition design.1 This substantially increases the probability of achieving moderate to high direct-drive target gain on the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The baseline direct-drive design for the NIF is itself very attractive. It...

Proton pinhole imaging on the National Ignition Facility.

Pinhole imaging of large (mm scale) carbon-deuterium (CD) plasmas by proton self-emission has been used for the first time to study the microphysics of shock formation, which is of astrophysical relevance. The 3 MeV deuterium-deuterium (DD) fusion proton self-emission from these plasmas is imaged using a novel pinhole imaging system, with up to five different 1 mm diameter pinholes positioned 2...

Development of nuclear diagnostics for the National Ignition Facility „invited..

The National Ignition Facility NIF will provide up to 1.8 MJ of laser energy for imploding inertial confinement fusion ICF targets. Ignited NIF targets are expected to produce up to 1019 DT neutrons. This will provide unprecedented opportunities and challenges for the use of nuclear diagnostics in ICF experiments. In 2005, the suite of nuclear-ignition diagnostics for the NIF was defined and th...

Relativistic Plasma Physics at the National Ignition Facility