Effect of Nonuniform Implosion on High-Gain Intertial Confinement Fusion Targets

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Abstract
High-gain target design and gain sensitivity to nonuniform implosion dynamics have been studied numerically. First of all, sensitivity of the pellet gain to the tailored pulse shape has been studied using the laser implosin code ILESTA-1D, and the gain scaling law has been obtained through an optimization of target and laser parameters. Then, the two-dimensional code, ILESTA-2D, was used to study the sensitivity of the pellet gain to the nonuniformity in target implosion. It is found that the fire-polishing effect by alpha-particle heating drastically smooths the spark structure. The implosion mode optimized with the ILESTA-1D code is relatively sensitive to nonuniformity and, therefore, higher implosion velocity modes are recommended from stability.