Diagnosing radiative shocks from deuterium and tritium implosions on NIF

Abstract

During the recent ignition tuning campaign at the National Ignition Facility, layered cryogenic deuterium and tritium capsules were imploded via x-ray driven ablation. The hardened gated x-ray imager diagnostic temporally and spatially resolves the x-ray emission from the core of the capsule implosion at energies above ∼8 keV. On multiple implosions, ∼200-400 ps after peak compression a spherically expanding radiative shock has been observed. This paper describes the methods used to characterize the radial profile and rate of expansion of the shock induced x-ray emission. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.