News

NIF Target Milestones and Key Partnerships Celebrated

Two important milestones achieved by the NIF&PS and Weapons and Complex Integration (WCI) directorates’ Target Fabrication Team and their key partnerships were celebrated on Sept. 19. Target Fabrication Manager Alex Hamza kicked off the celebration by announcing the first milestone: This summer, the team built the 10,000th target for the OMEGA Laser Facility at the University of Rochester’s...

LLNL Hosts Diagnostic Working Group Meeting

A National Diagnostic Working Group meeting was held at the Laboratory Sept. 9-11 to develop a roadmap for diagnostics required on the major Department of Energy inertial confinement fusion (ICF) facilities for the next five years. This was the ninth meeting of a national diagnostic working group. Recent meetings have focused on coordinating diagnostic efforts on NIF, the Z Facility at...

Demand Grows for NIF’s Versatile X-ray Spectrometer

Researchers are enthusiastic to take advantage of the recently commissioned NIF X-ray Spectrometer (NXS) for a variety of new time-resolved, high-resolution spectroscopic experiments on NIF.

Going from RAGS to Riches

The story of NIF’s Radiochemical Analysis of Gaseous Samples (RAGS) is a true trash-to-treasure tale, turning debris from the NIF Target Chamber into valuable data that helps shape future experiments.

John Edwards Receives Fusion Power Associates Leadership Award

John Edwards, associate program director for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and high energy density (HED) science and the NIF&PS ICF program leader, is a recipient of a 2014 Fusion Power Associates (FPA) Leadership Award. FPA Leadership Awards have been given annually since 1980 in recognition of outstanding leadership qualities in accelerating the development of fusion as a commercial...

A Productive Summer for NIF&PS Summer Scholars

Thirty-five NIF & Photon Science summer interns from as far away as Japan and South Korea spent the summer at LLNL working with mentors on projects ranging from material science to physics, mathematics, and a variety of engineering disciplines. The enthusiastic and talented Summer Scholars included U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen, ROTC cadets, and undergraduate and graduate students from across...

Meeting Discusses Planning for ICF-HED Diagnostics

Warren Hsing from NIF & Photon Science, Joe Kilkenny from General Atomics, and Craig Sangster from LLE recently visited CEA (the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission) and AWE to discuss future collaborations in diagnostic development. They met with Charles Lion, Director of CEA’s Simulation Program, Kevin Oades, head of diagnostics at the AWE’s Orion Laser, and other...

Mike Dunne Presents Plenary Talk at Optics+Photonics Conference

Mike Dunne, NIF&PS director of laser fusion energy, gave the opening plenary talk at the SPIE Optics+Photonics conference in San Diego on Aug. 17. The annual conference is the largest international, multidisciplinary optical sciences and technology meeting in North America. During his presentation, given to a standing-room-only audience of about 650, Dunne discussed the current status of the...

NIF Wins Over DOE’s Instagram Followers

NIF Operations Manager Bruno Van Wonterghem’s "Takeover" of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Instagram photo feed on Aug. 15 was one of the more popular events on the @DOE Instagram site (DOE sometimes turns control of the site over to one of its national laboratories for a day). The posts generated 820 "favorites" and 47 comments on the Energy and Livermore Lab accounts. The DOE account...

Next-generation Petawatt Laser Project Takes Shape at LLNL

Last year LLNL was awarded more than $45 million to develop and deliver a state-of-the-art laser system for the European Union’s Extreme Light Infrastructure Beamlines facility, under construction in the Czech Republic. Nearly a year into the project, much progress has been made, and all contract milestones to date have been delivered on schedule.

Summer Study Group Examines NIF Experiments

A two-week data review and summer study of the results to date of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and indirect drive ignition (IDI) research at NIF was held from Aug. 18 to 29. Led by John Edwards, associate program director for ICF and high energy density science and the NIF&PS ICF program leader, the meeting’s goals are to inform NIF’s sponsors and collaborators of the recent progress in...

Tracking NIF Implosions @200 Billion Frames a Second

An international team including researchers from General Atomics, the UK’s Kentech Instruments, Ltd., and LLNL has developed the world’s fastest x-ray framing camera: the Dilation X-ray Imager, or DIXI.

First ARC Stretched Pulses Fired Into Compressor Vessel

On Aug. 7, the Advanced Radiographic Capability (ARC) Team produced the first temporally compressed pulses on the NIF when they propagated low-energy pulses all the way through the main laser and beam transport system and into and through ARC Compressor Vessel 1.

LLNL Hosts DOE Laser Safety Officer Workshop

More than 150 laser safety professionals and guests from academic, corporate, and government laboratories attended the 10th Department of Energy (DOE) Laser Safety Officers Workshop at LLNL from Aug. 19 to 22. Hosted by the Laboratory and NIF, the workshop was an opportunity for individuals with laser safety responsibility to update and expand their laser safety knowledge. It featured...

First Multi-bunch Operation from a Compact X-band Accelerator

LLNL’s laser-Compton team has demonstrated for the first time the generation of two nearly-identical high-charge electron bunches spaced by only one X-band (11.424-GHz) radio-frequency (RF) period.

NIF Tests Two New Target Designs

NIF experiments in late August tested the performance of two alternative target designs, one with an alternate capsule ablator and another with modified hohlraum geometry.

Hohlraum Glint and Laser Pre-pulse Detector for NIF Experiments

The addition of a simple high-dynamic range optical signal detector to the widely used Velocity Interferometer System for Any Reflector (VISAR) diagnostic has made it possible to detect laser pre-pulse and laser glint that transmits through the capsule.

July Experimental Highlights

The NIF Team completed 19 target shots and 4 laser shots in July. Target shots were distributed as follows: High Energy Density (HED) Stewardship Science 8; Ignition 7; Discovery Science 1; National Security 2; Facility 1. Here are some additional highlights: On June 30 and July 1, the team conducted two complex hydrodynamics crystal ball shock breakout (SBO) measurements. The shots measured...

International Team Conducts First Collisionless Shock Experiment on NIF

The first NIF Discovery Science experiment designed to create and study fully formed collisionless shocks, such as those responsible for the properties of many astrophysical phenomena including supernova remnants, gamma-ray bursts, jets from active galactic nuclei, and cosmic ray acceleration, was performed on July 29.

Measuring Hydrodynamic Instability Growth in NIF Implosions

The results of NIF experiments in which pre-imposed "ripples" on the surface of NIF target capsules are used to measure hydrodynamic instability growth in NIF implosions were reported by LLNL researchers in a Physics of Plasmas paper published online on July 21. The hydrodynamic growth radiography (HGR) platform determines the growth of pre-imposed sinusoidal modulations of the capsule...