Laser-plasma interactions in long-scale-length plasmas under direct-drive National Ignition Facility conditions

被引:118
作者
Regan, SP
Bradley, DK
Chirokikh, AV
Craxton, RS
Meyerhofer, DD
Seka, W
Short, RW
Simon, A
Town, RPJ
Yaakobi, B
Carroll, JJ
Drake, RP
机构
[1] Univ Rochester, Laser Energet Lab, Rochester, NY 14623 USA
[2] Univ Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA
关键词
D O I
10.1063/1.873716
中图分类号
O35 [流体力学]; O53 [等离子体物理学];
学科分类号
070204 ; 080103 ; 080704 ;
摘要
Laser-plasma interaction experiments have been carried out on the OMEGA laser system [T. R. Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)] under plasma conditions representative of the peak of a 1.5 MJ direct-drive laser pulse proposed for the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Plasmas have been formed by exploding 18-20 mu m thick CH foils and by irradiating solid CH targets from one side, using up to 20 kJ of laser energy with phase plates installed on all beams. These plasmas and the NIF plasmas are predicted to have electron temperatures of 4 keV and density scale lengths close to 0.75 mm at the peak of the laser pulse. The electron temperature and density of the exploding-foil plasmas have been diagnosed using time-resolved x-ray spectroscopy and stimulated Raman scattering, respectively, and are consistent with predictions of the two-dimensional Eulerian hydrodynamics code SAGE [R. S. Craxton and R. L. McCrory, J. Appl. Phys. 56, 108 (1984)]. When the solid-target or exploding-foil plasmas were irradiated with an f/6 interaction beam at 1.5 X 10(15) W/cm(2), well above the NIF f/8 cluster intensity of similar to 2 X 10(14) W/cm(2), stimulated Brillouin backscattering (SBS) was found to be completely inhibited. A conservative upper limit of direct-backscattered SRS was found to be similar to 5% from the solid targets. SRS and SBS are thus unlikely to have a significant impact on target performance at the peak of the NIF direct-drive laser pulse. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S1070-664X(99)93405-5].
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页码:2072 / 2080
页数:9
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