Status and Needs of Computational Tools for Fast Ignition

Max Tabak
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Fast Ignition and other applications driven by high intensity short pulse lasers couple many aspects of high energy density physics from high-intensity laser plasma interactions(LPI) to electron transport including electromagnetic field generation to the radiative and mechanical response of the plasma. Various strategies for achieving this integration have been developed over the past decade ranging from single code solutions to solutions where various codes are linked together through data exchange. This talk will first describe the energy, power and intensity requirements for Fast Ignition as a setting in which the computations take place. Then the particle spectra and angular distributions produced in the LPI are compared among various models and with some available data. Hybrid transport calculations using the hybrid transport code, ZUMA, and ZUMA coupled to the radiation hydrodynamic code , HYDRA, are described. Possible open issues such as the importance of vicinage effects and various transport instabilities are mentioned.

Max Tabak, David Strozzi, Andreas Kemp, David Larson, Michael Marinak, Henry Shay, Bruce Cohen, Cliff Chen, Anthony Link, Frederico Fiuza, Pravesh Patel

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.

Presentation (PDF File)

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