Demonstration of fuel hot-spot pressure in excess of 50 Gbar for direct-drive, layered deuterium-tritium implosions on OMEGA

A record fuel hot-spot pressure Phs = 56±7 Gbar was inferred from x-ray and nuclear diagnostics for direct-drive inertial confinement fusion cryogenic, layered deuterium–tritium implosions on the 60-beam, 30-kJ, 351-nm OMEGA Laser System. When hydrodynamically scaled to the energy of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), these implosions achieved a Lawson parameter ~60% of the value required for ignition [A. Bose et al., Phys. Rev. E (in press)], similar to indirect-drive implosions [R. Betti et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 255003 (2015)], and nearly half of the direct-drive ignition-threshold pressure. Relative to symmetric, one-dimensional simulations, the inferred hot-spot pressure is ~40% lower. Furthermore, three-dimensional simulations suggest that low-mode distortion of the hot spot seeded by laser-drive nonuniformity and target-positioning error reduces target performance.