Opacity-on-NIF Backlighter Design

Stronger backlighters are needed as iron opacity experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) approach higher temperatures and densities. Cassio was used to explore backlighter design, simulate capsule implosions, and calculate signal output. Cassio is an Eularian radiation-hydrodynamics code developed at Los Alamos to study high-energy-density physics. The code was used to determine how variations of the geometries, capsule thicknesses, density gradients, and laser details affect backlighter performance. FESTR, a spectral postprocessor, was also used to obtain detailed, time-dependent spectral output from the Cassio simulations.