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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) has been built to achieve fusion energy gain (ignition) from inertial confinement fusion (ICF) for stockpile stewardship and basic science like nucleosynthesis, the process by which the heavier elements were created in cores of stars. LANL participates in the National Ignition Campaign to achieve fusion ignition, but also in a vast array of experiments related to ICF. These experiments are collectively in the regime called High Energy Density Laboratory Plasma (HEDLP) Physics. I will discuss a brief history of ICF at LANL, and some of the HEDLP research I am involved in to help further the goals of the laboratory and the NIC in general. These include hydrodynamic experiments and short-pulse laser experiments creating some of the most extreme conditions on earth and even the solar system in terms of pressure and temperature (MPa and tens of m llions of Kelvin), using some of the world’s largest and most intense laser facilities. In light of Europe’s push for a billion Euro investment in large lasers I will discuss our work in laser-plasma accelerated ion and electron beam sources related to HEDLP work and the vast prospects of enabling many applications in a variety of fields such as hadron cancer therapy, compact radioisotope generation, table-top nuclear physics, laboratory astrophysics, nuclear forensics, waste transmutation, special nuclear material (SNM) detection, and inertial fusion energy.
Host: Tom Intrator, P-24, intrator@lanl.gov, 665-2927