Formation of high areal density core using an efficient and robust implosion method for fast ignition

Abstract

A new fuel compression method for a fast ignition scheme is discussed. To form a high areal density fuel plasma for the ignition condition, homogenous isentropic compression (HIC) with solid spherical target is effective. We improve a multi-step pulse shape method that uses progressive shockwaves and reflected shockwaves for the compression, where a precisely controlled step-pulse laser drives the shockwaves to compress the fuel and suppress entropy increase. Another advantage of this approach is the relatively smooth high dense fuel is distributed at maximum compression time, compared to our previous design based on Kidder’s HIC method. In addition, we insert a power dip as a preconditioning before the last pulse step to reduce the electron and ion temperature near critical density. As a result, an optimum implosion is designed using 245 kJ of implosion laser energy to meet the ignition condition.