Implosion of indirectly driven reentrant-cone shell target.

We have examined the implosion of an indirectly driven reentrant-cone shell target to clarify the issues attendant on compressing fuel for a fast ignition target. The target design is the hydrodynamic equivalent of a NIF cryoignition target scaled to be driven by Omega. Implosions were imaged with backlit x radiographs and modeled with LASNEX. The simulations were generally in good agreement with the experiments with respect to the shell diameter, density, and symmetry, but did not show the prestagnation central absorption maximum. The existence of material between the original cone and the shell is sensitive to gold M-band radiation, which penetrates the shell and ablates gold from the cone. The simulated radiographs using recently measured M-band fractions showed absorption between the cone and shell similar to the experiment. This gold ablation might be a problem in a cryoignition target.