Alpha-heating analysis of burning plasma and ignition experiments on the National Ignition Facility

Abstract

A recent experiment conducted on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) described in the study by Abu-Shawareb et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 075001 (2022)] achieved a fusion yield output of 1.3 MJ from ∼ 220 kJ of x-ray energy absorbed by the capsule, demonstrating remarkable progress in the field of laser driven inertial confinement fusion. In the study by A. R. Christopherson [“Effects of charged particle heating on the hydrodynamics of inertially confined plasmas,” Ph.D. thesis (2020)], the plasma conditions needed to claim the onset of ignition and burn propagation were outlined and multiple criterion were provided to assess progress in inertial fusion experiments. In this work, we modify the metrics from A. R. Christopherson [“Effects of charged particle heating on the hydrodynamics of inertially confined plasmas,” Ph.D. thesis (2020)] to accurately calculate performance metrics for indirect-drive experiments on the NIF. We also show that performance metric trends observed in NIF data are consistent with theory and simulations. This analysis indicates that all the identified criterion for ignition and burn propagation have been exceeded by experiment 210 808.