Observations of multi-ion and kinetic effects in OMEGA shock driven implosions relevant to ignition experiments at the NIF

Inertial confinement fusion implosions are almost exclusively modeled as hydrodynamic in nature, with the electrons treated as a fluid and the ions treated as a single average-ion fluid. However, in the shock-convergence phase of virtually all inertial fusion implosions the mean-free path for ion-ion collisions becomes sufficiently long that both the shock front itself and the resulting central plasma are inadequately described by hydrodynamic modeling. A series of OMEGA experiments relevant to the shock convergence phase of ignition implosions shows little to no species separation in a DT plasma, but they do implicate other kinetic effects, like reactivity reduction, decreased shock energy coupling, and thermal decoupling of the D and T ions, which may play a role in ignition implosions. This work was supported by DOE, NLUF, LLNL, and LLE.