View of the interior of the omega target chamber during a direct-drive inertial fusion experiment at the University of Rochester's Laser Energetics Laboratory. Scientists send 28 kilojoules of laser energy to small capsules filled with deuterium and tritium fuel, causing the capsules to implode and produce plasma hot enough to trigger a fusion reaction between the fuel nuclei. The core temperature of these implosions is as high as 100 million degrees Celsius (1.).800 million degrees Fahrenheit). The velocity of the internal burst is usually between 500 and 600 kilometers per second (1between 1 and 1.35 million miles). The pressure at the core is 80 billion times that of the atmosphere. **University of Rochester Laser Energetics Laboratory** Eugene Kovaluk.
Researchers at the University of Rochester's Laser Energetics Laboratory (LLE) led the experiment to demonstrate a highly efficient "spark plug" for a direct-drive method for inertial confinement fusion (ICF). In two studies published in the journal Nature Physics, the team shared their findings and detailed the potential to expand these methods for successful nuclear fusion in future facilities.
LLE is the largest university project of the U.S. Department of Energy, with the Omega Laser System, the largest academic laser in the world, but still nearly one-percent of the energy of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. With Omega, scientists in Rochester have successfully tried several times to fire 28 kilojoules of laser energy into small capsules filled with deuterium and tritium fuel, causing the capsules to implode and produce plasma hot enough to trigger fusion reactions between fuel nuclei. These experiments gave rise to fusion reactions that produced more energy than was found in the central hot plasma.
The Omega experiment uses direct laser illumination of the capsule, unlike the indirect actuation method used on NIF. When the indirect drive method is used, the laser is converted to X-rays, which in turn drives the implosion of the capsule. NIF uses an indirect driver to irradiate the capsule with X-rays using about 2,000 kilojoules of laser energy. This led to a breakthrough in fusion ignition for NIF in 2022 – a fusion reaction that produces a net energy gain from a target.
Producing more fusion energy than the internal energy content of the place where nuclear fusion takes place is an important threshold," said Connor Williams, lead author of the first article'Dr. 23 (Physics and Astronomy) says he is now a Radiation and ICF Target Design Scientist at Sandia National Laboratories. "It's a necessary requirement for anything you want to accomplish later, like burning plasma or achieving ignition.
By demonstrating that they can achieve this level of implosion performance with only 28 kilojoules of laser energy, the Rochester team is excited about the prospect of applying the direct drive approach to lasers with more energy. Demonstrating the spark plug was an important step, however, the omega was too small to compress enough fuel to ignite.
If you can finally make a spark plug and compress the fuel, then direct drive has a number of properties that favor fusion energy compared to indirect drive," Varchas Gopalaswamy'Dr. 21 (Mechanical Engineering), who is an LLE scientist, said he led the second study that explored the impact of using a direct drive method on a megajoule-class laser, similar to the size of a NIF. "After amplifying the OMEGA results to a few megajoules of laser energy, it is expected that the fusion reaction will become self-sustaining, a condition called'Burning plasma'。
Gopalaswamy said that direct drive ICF is a promising method to achieve thermonuclear ignition and net energy in laser fusion.
A major factor contributing to the success of these latest experiments is the development of a new implosion design method based on statistics and validated by machine learning algorithms," said Robert L., principal scientist and principal scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Physics and AstronomyMcCrory professor Riccardo Betti said. "These ** models allow us to narrow down the pool of promising design candidates before conducting valuable experiments.
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