Polar-drive designs are proposed for producing symmetric implosions of thin-shell, DT gas-filled targets leading to high fusion-neutron yields for neutron-diagnostic development. The designs can be implemented as soon as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [E. M. Campbell and W. J. Hogan, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 41, B39 (1999)] is operational as they use indirect-drive phase plates. Two-dimensional simulations using the hydrodynamics code SAGE [R. S. Craxton and R. L. McCrory, J. Appl. Phys. 56, 108 (1984)] have shown that good low-mode uniformity can be obtained by choosing combinations of pointing and defocusing of the beams, including pointing offsets of individual beams within some of the NIF laser-beam quads. The optimizations have been carried out for total laser energies ranging from 350 kJ to 1.5 MJ, enabling the optimum pointing and defocusing parameters to be determined through interpolation for any given laser energy in this range. Neutron yields in the range of 10(15)-10(16) are expected. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.
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