Using secondary nuclear reaction products to infer the fuel areal density, convergence, and electron temperatures on OMEGA and the NIF

Brandon Lahmann

PSFC

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

5:00pm

NW17-218

PSFC Student Seminars

In deuterium-filled inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions, DD-tritons can undergo secondary fusion reactions with the thermal deuterium plasma to create secondary DT neutrons. On the National Ignition Facility (NIF), both the primary reactions (via DD-neutrons) and the secondary DT neutrons are routinely measured from several lines of sights using neutron time of flight (nTOF) spectrometers. The ratio of these secondary and primary reactions are used to infer the areal density (ρR) and the convergence of the fuel region. Additionally, the shape of the secondary DT neutron spectra can be used to infer the final asymmetry of the imploded capsule. Convergences inferred using x-ray imaging techniques are consistently larger than those inferred by this secondary DT neutron technique. These apparent discrepancies are not currently understood, but potential explanations are discussed. This work is supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.