https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20135905006
Laser-plasma interaction physics for shock ignition
1 CEA, DAM, DIF, 91297 Arpajon, France
2 LULI, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, CEA, UPMC, 91128 Palaiseau, France
3 Centre de Physique Théorique, Ecole Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France
4 Lebedev Physical Institute, 53 Leninskii Prospect, 119991 Moscow, Russia
5 CELIA, Université Bordeaux 1, 351 cours de la Libération, 33405 Talence Cedex, France
6 GSI Helmhotzzentrum fur Schwerionenforschung, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany
Published online: 15 November 2013
In the shock ignition scheme, the ICF target is first compressed with a long (nanosecond) pulse before creating a convergent shock with a short (∼100 ps) pulse to ignite thermonuclear reactions. This short pulse is typically (∼2.1015–1016 W/cm2) above LPI (Laser Plasma Instabilities) thresholds. The plasma is in a regime where the electron temperature is expected to be very high (2–4 keV) and the laser coupling to the plasma is not well understood. Emulating LPI in the corona requires large and hot plasmas produced by high-energy lasers. We conducted experiments on the LIL (Ligne d'Integration Laser, 10 kJ at 3ω) and the LULI2000 (0.4 kJ at 2ω) facilities, to approach these conditions and study absorption and LPI produced by a high intensity beam in preformed plasmas. After introducing the main risks associated with the short pulse propagation, we present the latest experiment we conducted on LPI in relevant conditions for shock ignition.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2013
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
