Approaches to fast ignition in inertial confinement fusion at Ile, Osaka

Using ILESTA-2D, a two dimensional hydrodynamic code that includes a panicle transport, as well as a one dimensional Fokker-Planck code, the authors show that not only a central but also an off-central spark can ignite the main fuel even with an implosion velocity perturbation of 15%. An anomalous penetration mechanism into an overdense plasma is studied with a 1 1/2 dimensional electromagnetic particle code (EMPAC). A preliminary experiment shows that a laser bores a hole into the overdense region. A 1 ps, 30 TW pulse from the GEKKO MII glass laser system is used to irradiate a solid target to investigate laser boring of overdense plasmas and high energy panicle generation. A 100 TW laser module is being constructed as the 13th arm of the GEKKO XII glass laser system (a 12 beam system) to experimentally verify fast ignition.