Nuclear diagnostic techniques for >10 MJ yields at the National Ignition Facility (NIF)

Ignition and routine MJ yields at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) have opened a new regime for Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF), and introduced new challenges and opportunities for nuclear measurements. Nuclear diagnostics provide the most direct measure of the state of the fusing D-T fuel, and are crucial to evaluating implosion performance and refining experimental designs to push to higher yields. At the NIF, a large effort is underway to evaluate new and existing nuclear diagnostic techniques for >10 MJ yields. At these yields backgrounds from the neutron signal itself become large, necessitating neutron attenuation, precise background characterization, or other methods to compensate. Burn times drop to significantly less than 100 ps, challenging temporal measurements and requiring ultrafast detection and recording systems. At the same time exciting new diagnostic techniques become accessible, as previously undetectable signals become measurable. This talk will give an overview of nuclear diagnostic techniques at the NIF and considerations for future facilities in this exciting new era of ICF.

*This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. LLNL-ABS-866350.