REP-RATED X-RAY DAMAGE AND ABLATION EXPERIMENTS FOR IFE AND ICF APPLICATIONS

摘要

The response of materials to high-dose x-ray exposures needs to be understood for inertial fusion energy (IFE) and inertial confinement fusion applications, where the requirements for IFE are considerably more stringent. In the IFE context, x-ray damage and/or small levels of ablation are of importance for component survivability, generation of debris, and contamination. Ablation quantities of even 1 angstrom per shot would result in material removal of more than 1 cm per year of operation. If even one part in a million of this material made its way to the final optics, it would coat them with a thickness equivalent to several waves of the laser light. Also, small-scale melting and thermomechan-ical effects, such as fatigue, can result from x-ray heating. These effects potentially become important when multiple shots are considered, and thus, their study requires use of rep-rated experiments. As a part of the High-Average Power Laser Program, the XAPPER experiment has been initiated at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. XAPPER produces high doses of low-energy x-rays at repetition rates of up to 10 Hz. Study of x-ray damage is underway. An overview of facility capabilities, results to date, and future plans are provided.