Modeling Ablator Microstructure in Inertial Confinement Fusion Experiments

Recently, I was an intern in the High-Energy-Density Physics Summer Student Program at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. There, I setup radiation hydrodynamics simulations in support of inertial confinement fusion experiments such as those conducted at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). As its name suggests, the goal of NIF is to achieve fusion ignition, the point at which a nuclear fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining. While researchers have made great strides in achieving ignition at NIF, one hypothesis for why this milestone has not yet been reached is that fluid instabilities form that cause ablator material to mix into the forming hotspot, which decreases the total fusion yield. It’s thought that the microstructure of the ablator could seed these types of fluid instabilities. To explore this, we conducted numerical simulations explicitly modeling the microstructure of high density carbon ablators to understand the mechanism by which it might promote instability growth. I presented my work at the end of the summer, and these slides are available here (in the second half of the presentation).