Brandon Lahmann
PSFC
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
5:00pm
In deuterium-filled inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions, DD-tritons can undergo secondary fusion reactions with the thermal deuterium plasma to create secondary DT neutrons. On the National Ignition Facility (NIF), both the primary reactions (via DD-neutrons) and the secondary DT neutrons are routinely measured from several lines of sights using neutron time of flight (nTOF) spectrometers. The ratio of these secondary and primary reactions are used to infer the areal density (ρR) and the convergence of the fuel region. Additionally, the shape of the secondary DT neutron spectra can be used to infer the final asymmetry of the imploded capsule. Convergences inferred using x-ray imaging techniques are consistently larger than those inferred by this secondary DT neutron technique. These apparent discrepancies are not currently understood, but potential explanations are discussed. This work is supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Plasma Science and Fusion Center
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue, NW17
Cambridge, MA 02139
info@psfc.mit.edu
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