Measurements of the fuel distribution in cryogenic D-T direct-drive implosions

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Department of Physics and Astronomy, 2015.In direct-drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments, a capsule filled with a mixture of deuterium and tritium ice at cryogenic temperature is irradiated by a symmetric arrangements of laser beams to compress and heat the fuel to conditions required for thermonuclear reactions. The areal density (ρR) of the compressed fuel assembly in a cryogenic implosion is one of the fundamental parameters required to assess the target performance. The ρR measurements presented here are achieved by measuring the complex neutron energy spectrum resulting from primary and secondary nuclear reactions within the compressed fuel assembly. Advances in neutron time-of-flight diagnostics have made it possible to infer the neutron fraction that elastically scatters off the tritons in the compressed fuel in the energy range from 3.5 -5.5 MeV which is directly proportional to the areal density. In these OMEGA cryogenic campaigns from January 2013 to August 2014, measured low-mode modulations show good agreement with Monte Carlo simulations. Deviations up to 40% in the cold-fuel distribution from spherical symmetry have been inferred from the scattered neutron spectrum. Understanding the mechanism for anisotropic areal density measurements is crucial to improve hydrodynamically equivalent ignition-relevant direct-drive cryogenic implosions on OMEGA