The filamentary structures and associated electromagnetic fields of a relativistic electron beam have been studied by three dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations in the context of Fast Ignition fusion. The simulations explicitly include collisions in return plasma current and distinctly examine the effects of beam temperature and collisions on the growth of filamentary structures generated.
In the shock-ignition inertial confinement fusion scheme, high-intensity lasers propagate through an inhomogeneous coronal plasma, driving a shock designed to cause fuel ignition. During the high-intensity ignitor laser pulse, SRS backscatter in the long scale-length coronal plasma is likely to be in the kinetic regime. In this work, we use one-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations to show that there is a non-linear frequency shift caused by kinetic effects, resulting in the growth of Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) in an inhomogeneous plasma far exceeding the predictions of the fluid the…
The effects of nanosecond pulsed non-equilibrium plasma discharges on ignition characteristics and low-temperature chemistry or LTC of DME/O2/Ar mixtures are numerically investigated in a plane-to-plane geometry at a reduced pressure of 76 Torr. Detailed numerical investigations of the two-stage ignition process in different temperature regimes of DME have been created through a high-fidelity one-dimensional, multi-timescale plasma-discharge model. Two different initial temperatures are set for comparison: 550K, the negative temperature coefficient regime, where LTC plays a dominate role; 800K…
An optically thin $p$-$^{11}$B plasma loses more energy to bremsstrahlung than it gains from fusion reactions, unless the ion temperature can be elevated above the electron temperature. In thermal plasmas, the temperature differences required are possible in small Coulomb logarithm regimes, characterized by high density and low temperature. The minimum Lawson criterion for thermal $p$-$^{11}$B plasmas and the minimum $ρR$ required for ICF volume ignition are calculated. Ignition could be reached more easily if the fusion reactivity can be improved with nonthermal ion distributions. To establis…
Quantum and collisional effects on the unstable spectrum of a relativistic electron beam-plasma system are investigated through a two-fluids model. Application is made to the near target center interaction of the relativistic electron beam in the Fast Ignition Scenario. Partial degeneracy effects are found negligible while the most influential factors are the beam temperature and the electron-ion collision frequency of the plasma. The introduction of the latter triggers some oblique unstable modes of much larger wave length than the collisionless ones. Transition from the collisionless regime …
The hall current in the periphery of a filamentary plasma with the inwardly directed radial electric field, Er has been investigated experimentally by utilizing a TPD type dc discharge. When the cusp magnetic filed B$θ$ is applied perpendicular to the stationary background magnetic field Bz, the hall current by the ErxB$θ$ drift of electrons is induced in the periphery of the magnetized filamentary plasma.
In the electron-driven fast-ignition approach to inertial confinement fusion, petawatt laser pulses are required to generate MeV electrons that deposit several tens of kilojoules in the compressed core of an imploded DT shell. We review recent progress in the understanding of intense laser plasma interactions (LPI) relevant to fast ignition. Increases in computational and modeling capabilities, as well as algorithmic developments have led to enhancement in our ability to perform multi-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of LPI at relevant scales. We discuss the physics of the intera…
Nanosecond plasmas in liquids are being used for water treatment, electrolysis or biomedical applications. The exact nature of these very dynamic plasmas and most important their ignition physics are strongly debated. The ignition itself may be explained by two competing hypothesis: (i) ignition via field effects or (ii) via electron multiplication in nanovoids. Both hypothesis are supported by theory, but experimental data are very sparse due to the difficulty to monitor the very fast processes in space and time. In this paper, we are using fast camera measurements and fast emission spectrosc…
Uniform amorphous carbon film is deposited on the inner surface of quartz tube having the inner diameter of 6 mm and the outer diameter of 8 mm. A pulsed filamentary plasma source is used for the deposition. Long plasma filaments (~ 140 mm) as a positive discharge are generated inside the tube in argon with methane admixture. FTIR-ATR, XRD, SEM, LSM and XPS analyses give the conclusion that deposited film is amorphous composed of non-hydrogenated sp2 carbon and hydrogenated sp3 carbon. Plasma is characterized using optical emission spectroscopy, voltage-current measurement, microphotography an…
Two-dimensional Particle-In-Cell simulations are used to explore collisionless shock acceleration in the corona plasma surrounding the compressed core of an inertial confinement fusion pellet. We show that an intense laser pulse interacting with the long scale-length plasma corona is able to launch a collisionless shock around the critical density. The nonlinear wave travels up-ramp through the plasma reflecting and accelerating the background ions. Our results suggest that protons with characteristics suitable for ion fast ignition may be achieved in this way.
The presence of multiple ion species can add additional branches to the IAW dispersion relation and change the Landau damping significantly. Different IAW modes excited by stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and different SBS behaviors in several typical ignition hohlraum plasmas in the high-temperature and high-density region have been researched by Vlasov-Maxwell simulation. The slow mode in HeH or CH plasmas is the least damped mode and will be excited in SBS, while the fast mode in AuB plasmas is the least damped mode and will be excited in SBS. Due to strong Landau damping, the SBS in H…
We developed a new nonlinear fluid laser-plasma-instability code (FLAME) using a multi-fluid plasma model combined with full electromagnetic wave equations. The completed one-dimensional (1D) version of FLAME was used to study laser-plasma instabilities in shock ignition. The simulations results showed that absolute SRS modes growing near the quarter-critical surface were saturated by Langmuir-wave Decay Instabilities (LDI) and pump depletion. The ion-acoustic waves from LDI acted as seeds of stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS), which displayed a bursting pattern and caused strong pump deple…
The National Ignition Facility(NIF) megajoule laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory(LLNL)\cite{moses} has produced a significant amount of useful physics results related to inertial confinement fusion since it began operating in 2010. However, achievement of its primary goal of generating ignition in a thermonuclear plasma has proven elusive, and measured yields were far below those expected from an ignited, and burning, plasma. The reason for the limited yields has not been explained in detail. This work proposes, and shows support for, the possibility that the low yields may be…
Two-dimension Particle-in-cell simulations for laser plasma interaction with laser intensity of $10^{16} W/cm^2$, plasma density range of 0.01-0.28$n_c$ and scale length of $230 -330 μm$ showed significant pump depletion of the laser energy due to stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in the low density region ($n_e=0.01-0.2 n_c$). The simulations identified hot electrons generated by SRS in the low density region with moderate energy and by two-plasmon-decay (TPD) near $n_e=0.25n_c$ with higher energy. The overall hot electron temperature (46 keV) and con…
We present hybrid PIC simulations of fast electron transport and energy deposition in pre-compressed fusion targets, taking full account of collective magnetic effects and the hydrodynamic response of the background plasma. Results on actual ignition of an imploded fast ignition configuration are shown accounting for the increased beam divergence found in recent experiments [J.S. Green et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 015003 (2008)] and the reduction of the electron kinetic energy due to profile steepening predicted by advanced PIC simulations [B. Chrisman et al. Phys. Plasmas 15, 056309 (2008)].…
For developing a laser boron fusion reactor driven by picosecond laser pulses of more than 30 petawatts power, advances are reported about computations for the plasma block generation by the dielectric explosion of the interaction. Further results are about the direct drive ignition mechanism by a single laser pulse without the problems of spherical irradiation. For the sufficiently large stopping lengths of the generated alpha particles in the plasma results from other projects can be used.
A novel ignition hohlraum for indirect-drive inertial confinement fusion is proposed, which is named as three-axis cylindrical hohlraum (TACH). TACH is a kind of 6 laser entrance holes (LEHs) hohlraum, which is made of three cylindrical hohlraums orthogonally jointed. Laser beams are injected through every entrance hole with the same incident angle of 55°. The view-factor simulation result shows that the time-varying drive asymmetry of TACH is no more than 1.0% in the whole drive pulse period without any supplementary technology such as beam phasing etc. Its coupling efficiency of TACH is clos…
Proton beam transport in the context of proton driven Fast Ignition is usually assumed to be stable due to protons high inertia, but an analytical analysis of the process is still lacking. The stability of a charge and current neutralized proton beam passing through a plasma is therefore conducted here, for typical proton driven Fast Ignition parameters. In the cold regime, two fast growing Buneman-like modes are found, with an inverse growth-rate much smaller than the beam time-of-flight to the target core. The stability issue is thus not so obvious, and Kinetic effects are investigated. One …
It was reported that the fuel core was heated up to ~ 0.8 [keV] in the fast ignition experimentswith cone-guided targets, but they could not theoretically explain heating mechanisms and achievement of such high temperature. Thus simulations should play an important role in estimating the schemeperformance, and we must simulate each phenomenon with individual codes and integrate them under the Fast Ignition Integrated Interconnecting code project. In the previous integrated simulations, fast electronsgenerated by the laser-plasma interaction were too hot to efficiently heat the core and we got …
Proton imaging is a powerful tool for probing electromagnetic fields in a plasma, providing a path-integrated map of the field topology. However, in cases where the field structure is highly inhomogeneous, inferring spatial properties of the underlying field from proton images can be difficult. This problem is exemplified by recent experiments which used proton imaging to probe the filamentary magnetic field structures produced by the Weibel instability in collisionless counter-streaming plasmas. In this paper, we perform analytical and numerical analysis of proton images of systems containing…
Fast ignition is an alternative concept of laser fusion in which the task of compressing the fusion pellet to supersolid densities is accomplished by the conventional high energy nanosecond glass lasers and the task of igniting the compressed pellet is given to a high intensity, moderate energy pico second source which can set the pellet ablaze (with DT fusion reactions) by creating an adequate size hot spot in it. In this letter, we present a conceptual method by which energy from carbon dioxide ($ CO_2 $) laser could be coupled to heat up ions produced in situ in the plasma, which in turn pr…
The elliptical magnetic mirror scheme for guiding fast electrons for Fast Ignition proposed by Schmitz (H.Schmitz et al., {\it Plasma Phys.Control.Fusion},{\bf 54} 085016 (2012)) is studied for conditions on the multi-kJ scale which are much closer to full-scale Fast Ignition. When scaled up, the elliptical mirror scheme is still highly beneficial to Fast Ignition. An increase in the coupling effiency by a factor of 3--4 is found over a wide range of fast electron divergence half-angles.
During the initial phase of microwave (MW) power launch inside a MW discharge ion source (MDIS), plasma and the electric fields are evolved with time together in the plasma volume. The spatio-temporal evolution pattern in the cavity of a MDIS is reported here, highlighting the role of these electric fields on power coupling processes. Evolution of electric field and so power coupling processes are calculated using Finite Element Method (FEM). Unlike PIC/MCC or hybrid fluid, here FEM model uses time dependent Poisson solver through drift-diffusion approach. In presence of plasma gradient in the…
A completely rigorous first-principles calculation of the charged particle stopping power has recently been performed by Brown, Preston, and Singleton (BPS). This calculation is exact to leading and next-to-leading order in the plasma number density, including an exact treatment of two-body quantum scattering. The BPS calculation is therefore extremely accurate in the plasma regime realized during the ignition and burn of an inertial confinement fusion capsule. For deuterium-tritium fusion, the 3.5 MeV alpha particle range tends to be 20-30% longer than most models in the literature have predi…
An integrated simulation approach fully based upon particle-in-cell (PIC) model is proposed, which involves both fast particle generation via laser solid-density plasma interaction and transport and energy deposition of the particles in extremely high density plasma. It is realized by introducing two independent systems in a simulation, where the fast particle generation is simulated by a full PIC system and the transport and energy deposition computed by a second PIC system with a reduced field solver. Data of the fast particles generated in the full PIC system are copied to the reduced PIC s…
Fast Ignition Inertial Confinement Fusion is a variant of inertial fusion in which DT fuel is first compressed to high density and then ignited by a relativistic electron beam generated by a fast (< 20 ps) ultra-intense laser pulse, which is usually brought in to the dense plasma via the inclusion of a re-entrant cone. The transport of this beam from the cone apex into the dense fuel is a critical part of this scheme, as it can strongly influence the overall energetics. Here we review progress in the theory and numerical simulation of fast electron transport in the context of Fast Ignition. Im…
We report results and modelling of an experiment performed at the TAW Vulcan laser facility, aimed at investigating laser-plasma interaction in conditions which are of interest for the Shock Ignition scheme to Inertial Confinement Fusion, i.e. laser intensity higher than 10^16 W/cm2 impinging on a hot (T > 1 keV), inhomogeneous and long scalelength preformed plasma. Measurements show a significant SRS backscattering (4 - 20% of laser energy) driven at low plasma densities and no signatures of TPD/SRS driven at the quarter critical density region. Results are satisfactorily reproduced by an ana…
We present experimental observations of electron-scale structures in an expanding high-energy-density (HED) plasma generated with a modest intensity $\sim 2 \times 10^{14}$ W/cm$^2$, $\sim1$ ns laser. The observed structures have wavelengths ($\sim 150-220 μm$) and growth rates ($\sim 0.4-1.0$ ns$^{-1}$) consistent with an electron-driven Weibel instability where the anisotropy in the electron distribution is small, $A\sim 0.002$. This instability is found to be a better match to the observed phenomena than other typical field-generation mechanisms found in HED plasmas, including counter-strea…
In this experimental study, a flowing dielectric barrier discharge operating at atmospheric pressure is used for the splitting of CO2 into O2 and CO. The influence of the applied frequency and plasma power on the microdischarge properties is investigated to understand their role on the CO2 conversion. Electrical measurements are carried out to explain the conversion trends and to characterize the microdischarges through their number, their lifetime, their intensity and the induced electrical charge. Their influence on the gas and electrode temperatures is also evidenced through optical emissio…
We study stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) in shock ignition by comparing fluid and PIC simulations. Under typical parameters for the OMEGA experiments [Theobald \emph{et al}., Phys. Plasmas \textbf{19}, 102706 (2012)], a series of 1D fluid simulations with laser intensities ranging between 2$\times$10$^{15}$ and 2$\times$10$^{16}$ W/cm$^2$ finds that SBS is the dominant instability, which increases significantly with the incident intensity. Strong pump depletion caused by SBS and SRS limits the transmitted intensity at the 0.17n$_c$ to be less than 3.…
A selfconsistent 1D theoretical framework for plasma assisted ignition and combustion is reviewed. In this framework, a frozen electric field modeling approach is applied to take advantage of the quasiperiodic behaviors of the electrical characteristics to avoid the recalculation of electric field for each pulse. The correlated dynamic adaptive chemistry (CoDAC) method is employed to accelerate the calculation of large and stiff chemical mechanisms. The timestep is updated dynamically during the simulation through a three-stage multitimescale modeling strategy, which takes advantage of the lar…
Fast magnetic reconnection was observed between magnetized laser-produced plasmas at the National Ignition Facility. Two highly-elongated plasma plumes were produced by tiling two rows of lasers, with magnetic fields generated in each plume by the Biermann battery effect. Detailed magnetic field observations, obtained from proton radiography using a D$^3$He capsule implosion, reveal reconnection occurring in an extended, quasi-1D current sheet with large aspect ratio $\sim 100$. The 1-D geometry allowed a rigorous and unique reconstruction of the magnetic field, which showed a reconnection cur…
Two-dimensional simulations of ion beam driven fast ignition are presented. Ignition energies of protons with Maxwellian spectrum and carbon ions with quasimonoenergetic and Maxwellian energy distributions are evaluated. The effect of the coronal plasma surrounding the compressed deuterium-tritium is studied for three different fuel density distributions. It is found that quasi- monoenergetic ions have better coupling with the compressed deuterium-tritium and substantially lower ignition energies. Comparison of quasimonoenergetic carbon ions and relativistic electrons as ignitor beams shows si…
The paper considers the dynamics of the plasma generated by the explosive-emission cells of the cathode spot of a vacuum arc in a magnetic field. It is shown that the expansion of the (high-density) plasma in a transverse magnetic field may cause asymmetry in the plasma density distribution at the cathode spot boundary. The asymmetry, in turn, increases the probability of the ignition of new explosive-emission cells in the region of a stronger magnetic field in the 'anti-amperian' direction of BxI. The disturbed plasma density distribution estimated in the MHD approximation is presented. In ad…
Superconducting Radio Frequency (SRF) cavities performance preservation is crucial, from vertical test to accelerator operation. Field Emission (FE) is still one of the performance limiting factors to overcome and plasma cleaning has been proven successful by the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), in cleaning field emitters and increasing the work function of Nb. A collaboration has been established between Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) with the purpose of applying plasma processing to the Linac Coheren…
The possibility of fusion ignition in proton-Boron$^{11}$ plasma is strongly enhanced if the energy from the fusion-produced $α$ particles is channeled to fast protons, but in an environment in which most of the protons are thermally distributed. This hybrid of thermonuclear fusion and beam-plasma fusion offers surprisingly large advantages to either purely thermonuclear or purely beam-plasma fusion, neither of which can by themselves significantly exceed the large bremsstrahlung radiation emitted by the proton-Boron$^{11}$ plasma. The hybrid scheme has the potential to reduce the confinement …
The results from 2.5-dimensional Particle-in-Cell simulations for the interaction of a picosecond-long ignition laser pulse with a plasma pellet of 50-$μm$ diameter and 40 critical density are presented. The high density pellet is surrounded by an underdense corona and is isolated by a vacuum region from the simulation box boundary. The laser pulse is shown to filament and create density channels on the laser-plasma interface. The density channels increase the laser absorption efficiency and help generate an energetic electron distribution with a large angular spread. The combined distribution…
We present an ion kinetic model describing the ignition and burn of the deuterium-tritium fuel of inertial fusion targets. The analysis of the underlying physical model enables us to develop efficient numerical methods to simulate the creation, transport and collisional relaxation of fusion reaction products (alpha-particles) at a kinetic level. A two-energy-scale approach leads to a self-consistent modeling of the coupling between suprathermal alpha-particles and the thermal bulk of the imploding plasma. This method provides an accurate numerical treatment of energy deposition and transport p…
For enhancing the core heating efficiency in electron-driven fast ignition, we proposed the fast electron beam guiding using externally applied longitudinal magnetic fields. Based on the PIC simulations for the FIREX-class experiments, we demonstrated the sufficient beam guiding performance in the collisional dense plasma by kT-class external magnetic fields for the case with moderate mirror ratio (~<10 ). Boring of the mirror field was found through the formation of magnetic pipe structure due to the resistive effects, which indicates a possibility of beam guiding in high mirror field for hig…
Dielectric barrier discharges (DBDs) are commonly used to generate cold plasmas at atmospheric pressure. Whatever their configuration (tubular or planar), the presence of a dielectric barrier is mandatory to prevent too much charge build up in the plasma and the formation of a thermal arc. In this article, the role of the barrier thickness (2.0, 2.4 and 2.8 mm) and of the kind of dielectric material (alumina, mullite, pyrex, quartz) is investigated on the filamentary behavior in the plasma and on the CO2 conversion in a tubular flowing DBD, by means of mass spectrometry measurements correlated…
The document describes a numerical algorithm to simulate plasmas and fluids in the 3 dimensional space by the Euler method, in which the spatial meshes are fixed to the space. The plasmas and fluids move through the spacial Euler mesh boundary. The Euler method can represent a large deformation of the plasmas and fluids. On the other hand, when the plasmas or fluids are compressed to a high density, the spatial resolution should be ensured to describe the density change precisely. The present 3D Euler code is developed to simulate a nuclear fusion fuel ignition and burning. Therefore, the 3D E…
The charged particle stopping power in a highly ionized and weakly to moderately coupled plasma has been calculated to leading and next-to-leading order by Brown, Preston, and Singleton (BPS). After reviewing the main ideas behind this calculation, we use a Fokker-Planck equation derived by BPS to compute the electron-ion energy partitioning of a charged particle traversing a plasma. The motivation for this application is ignition for inertial confinement fusion -- more energy delivered to the ions means a better chance of ignition, and conversely. It is therefore important to calculate the fr…
Kinney et al [PPL \textbf{1},(1994)] have investigated plasma filamentary structure dynamics. More recently, Wilkin et al [Phys Rev Lett \textbf{99}:134501,(2007)] have shown that kinetic energy spectrum of magnetic structures in small-scale dynamos, are predominantly filamentary. Kirilov et al [PRE (2009)] have shown that use of the boundary values of the mean-field isotropic helical turbulent $α^{2}$-dynamo, could determine the morphology of dynamo instability. In this paper, filamentary Frenet frame in diffusive media, displays the existence of kinematic chaotic dynamo in 3D Euclidean space…
Optimization of Laser Irradiation Uniformity for the Double-Cone Ignition Scheme with MULTI-3D simulations
School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学物理与天文学院）；Zhiyuan College, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学致远学院）；State Key Laboratory of Dark Matter Physics, Key Laboratory for Laser Plasmas (MOE), Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学暗物质物理国家重点实验室、激光等离子体教育部重点实验室）；E.T.S.I. Aeronautica y del Espacio, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid（马德里理工大学航空航天工程学院）
We present test-particle simulations of electrons during a nonlinear MHD simulation of a type-I edge localized mode (ELM) to explore the effect of an eruptive plasma filament on the kinetic level. The electrons are moderately heated and accelerated during the filamentary eruption on a fast time scale of the order of 0.5 ms. A clearly non-thermal tail is formed in the distribution of the kinetic energy that is of power-law shape and reaches 90 keV for some particles. The acceleration is exclusively observed in the direction parallel to the magnetic field, i.e. with a clear preference in counter…
Recently achieved high intensities of short laser pulses open new prospects in their application to hole boring in inhomogeneous overdense plasmas and for ignition in precompressed DT fusion targets. A simple analytical model and numerical simulations demonstrate that pulses with intensities exceeding 1022 W/cm2 may penetrate deeply into the plasma as a result of efficient ponderomotive acceleration of ions in the forward direction. The penetration depth as big as hundreds of microns depends on the laser fluence, which has to exceed a few tens of GJ/cm2. The fast ions, accelerated at the botto…
Fusion energy from reacting hydrogen (protons) with the boron isotope 11 (HB11) resulting in three stable helium nuclei, is without problem of nuclear radiation in contrast to DT fusion. But the HB11 reaction driven by nanosecond laser pulses with thermal compression and ignition by lasers is extremely difficult. This changed radically when irradiation with picosecond laser pulses produces a non-thermal plasma block ignition with ultrahigh acceleration. This uses the nonlinear (ponderomotive) force to surprisingly resulting in same thresholds as DT fusion even under pessimistic assumption of b…
