Speaker
Description
Groundbreaking advancements have been made in Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) research at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), resulting in experiments that have surpassed Lawson's criterion and have demonstrated a gain (G) greater than unity [1]. Improving the gain in ICF requires achieving higher areal densities, exceeding 1.5 g/cm2, assembled via spherical compression to confine the fuel while the thermonuclear burn wave consumes more than 10% of the deuterium-tritium fuel. In this presentation, we will provide an overview of the ICF implosions that have achieved ignition on the NIF. Additionally, we will delve into the ongoing efforts to increase compression in ICF experiments to attain even higher gains (G >> 1).
This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.
[1] H. Abu-Shawareb et al., PRL 129, 075001 (2022).
