Plastic ablator ignition capsule design for the National Ignition Facility

The National Ignition Campaign, tasked with designing and fielding targets for fusion ignition experiments on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [G. H. Miller, E. I. Moses, and C. R. Wuest, Nucl. Fusion 44, S228 (2004)], has carried forward three complementary target designs for the past several years: a beryllium ablator design, a plastic ablator design, and a high-density carbon or synthetic diamond design. This paper describes current simulations and design optimization to develop the plastic ablator capsule design as a candidate for the first ignition attempt on NIF. The trade-offs in capsule scale and laser energy that must be made to achieve a comparable ignition probability to that with beryllium are emphasized. Large numbers of one-dimensional simulations, meant to assess the statistical behavior of the target design, as well as two-dimensional simulations to assess the target’s susceptibility to Rayleigh–Taylor growth are presented.