Study of Direct-Drive, DT-Gas-Filled-Plastic-Capsule Implosions Using Nuclear Diagnostics on OMEGA

54 LLE Review, Volume 86 Introduction High-gain inertial confinement fusion (ICF) requires uniform compression of a spherical capsule to a state of high density and temperature;1–3 current research is aimed at finding ways to achieve this goal. This article describes how a range of traditional and new nuclear diagnostics are used to study the compression performance of deuterium-tritium (DT)-filled target capsules imploded by direct laser drive on LLE’s 60beam OMEGA laser system.4 The sensitivity of the implosion performance to the uniformity of laser power deposition is studied by measuring the fuel and shell areal densities (ρR) and the shell electron temperature (Te). These parameters are studied using the first comprehensive set of separate spectral measurements of deuterons, tritons, and protons (“knockons”) elastically scattered from the fuel and shell by 14.1-MeV DT fusion neutrons.