Improving the hot-spot pressure and demonstrating ignition hydrodynamic equivalence in cryogenic deuterium–tritium implosions on OMEGAa)

Reaching ignition in direct-drive (DD) inertial confinement fusion implosions requires achieving central pressures in excess of 100 Gbar. The OMEGA laser system [T. R. Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)] is used to study the physics of implosions that are hydrodynamically equivalent to the ignition designs on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [J. A. Paisner et al., Laser Focus World 30, 75 (1994)]. It is shown that the highest hot-spot pressures (up to 40 Gbar) are achieved in target designs with a fuel adiabat of α ≃ 4, an implosion velocity of 3.8 × 107 cm/s, and a laser intensity of ∼1015 W/cm2. These moderate-adiabat implosions are well understood using two-dimensional hydrocode simulations. The performance of lower-adiabat implosions is significantly degraded relative to code predictions, a common feature between DD implosions on OMEGA and indirect-drive cryogenic implosions on the NIF. Simplified theoretical models are developed to gain physical understanding of the implosion dynamics th...