Progress towards ignition on the National Ignition Facility a)

(Received 26 March 2013; accepted 5 June 2013; published online 30 July 2013)The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory includes aprecision laser system now capable of delivering 1.8MJ at 500 TW of 0.35-lm light to a target.NIF has been operational since March 2009. A variety of experiments have been completed insupport of NIF’s mission areas: national security, fundamental science, and inertial fusion energy.NIF capabilities and infrastructure are in place to support its missions with nearly 60 X-ray,optical, and nuclear diagnostic systems. A primary goal of the National Ignition Campaign (NIC)on the NIF was to implode a low-Z capsule filled with 0.2mg of deuterium-tritium (DT) fuel vialaser indirect-drive inertial confinement fusion and demonstrate fusion ignition and propagatingthermonuclear burn with a net energy gain of 5–10 (fusion yield/input laser energy). Thisrequires assembling the DT fuel into a dense shell of 1000g/cm