THOMSON SCATTERING IN INERTIAL CONFINEMENT FUSION RESEARCH

摘要

We have shown that Thomson scattering is the key diagnostic for accurately measuring the plasma conditions in laser plasmas, in particular inside inertial confinement fusion hohlraums. The comparison of the radiation-hydrodynamic simulations with the results of the Thomson scattering measurements have shown that including magnetic fields into the heat transport modeling is important for predicting the plasma conditions in inertial confinement fusion research. This finding is important for a number of applications. For example, we find that stimulated Raman scattering spectra calculated from a convective gain model, with LASNEX calculations providing the input plasma parameters, show improved agreement with measurements when including magnetic fields. For ignition experiments, the presence of electron temperature gradients as seen with the Thomson scattering measurements will spatially de-tune the stimulated Raman scattering resonance which might lead to a smaller scale length for the growth of this unwanted parametric laser-plasma instability. Verifying these plasma wave phenomena in future laser-plasma interaction experiments on Omega will be an important part of our research program in preparing ignition experiments on NIF.