Plasma Collision in a Gas Atmosphere.

We present a study on the impact of a gas atmosphere on the collision of two counterpropagating plasmas (gold and carbon). Imaging optical Thomson scattering data of the plasma collision with and without helium in between have been obtained at the Omega laser facility. Without gas, we observed large scale mixing of colliding gold and carbon ions.

Dissociation along the principal Hugoniot of the Laser Mégajoule ablator material.

Glow discharge polymer hydrocarbon (GDP-CH) is used as the ablator material in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) capsules for the Laser Mégajoule and National Ignition Facility. Due to its fabrication process, GDP-CH chemical composition and structure differ from commercially available plastics and detailed knowledge of its properties in the warm dense matter regime is needed to achieve accurate design of ICF capsules. First-principles ab initio simulations of the GDP-CH principal Hugoniot up to 8 Mbar were performed using the quantum molecular dynamics (QMD) code abinit and showed that atomic bond dissociation has an effect on the compressibility.

Experimental and ab initio investigations of microscopic properties of laser-shocked Ge-doped ablator.

Plastic materials (CH) doped with mid-Z elements are used as ablators in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) capsules and in their surrogates. Hugoniot equation of state (EOS) and electronic properties of CH doped with germanium (at 2.5% and 13% dopant fractions) are investigated experimentally up to 7 Mbar using velocity and reflectivity measurements of shock fronts on the GEKKO laser at Osaka University.

Impact of oxygen on the 300-K isotherm of Laser Megajoule ablator using ab initio simulation.

The ablator material for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) capsules on the Laser Mégajoule is a glow-discharge polymer (GDP) plastic. Its equation of state (EOS) is of primary importance for the design of such capsules, since it has direct consequences on shock timing and is essential to mitigate hydrodynamic instabilities. Using ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD), we have investigated the 300-K isotherm of amorphous CH(1.

Observation of the stabilizing effect of a laminated ablator on the ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability.

A laminated ablator is explored as an alternative concept for stabilizing the ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability which develops in inertial fusion targets. Experiments measuring the growth of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability of laminated planar foils are reported. Consistent with both theory and simulations, a significant reduction of the perturbation growth is experimentally observed for laminated ablators in comparison to what is observed for classical uniform ablators.