Energy Coupling and LPI Dependencies in MagLIF Pre-Heat

The Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion (MagLIF) program at Sandia National Laboratories is pursues magneto-inertial fusion concept on the Z-Accelerator. It involves pre-heating the deuterium fuel with the Z-Beamlet laser. In order to optimize pre-heat, dedicated laser-plasma studies at the Pecos target chamber are performed to develop an ideal laser configuration. Besides the general goal of increasing coupled energy, the experiments put a specific focus on losses from laser plasma instabilities (LPI). We present insights from varying fill density, fill gas (deuterium vs.~helium), and laser pulse shape. For the latter, we show the results of varying the gap between pre-pulse that evaporates the window of the laser-entrance-hole(LEH)and the main pulse that heats the fuel.