X-ray imaging and radiation transport effects on cylindrical implosions

Abstract

Magnetization of inertial confinement implosions is a promising means of improving their performance, owing to the potential reduction of energy losses within the target and mitigation of hydrodynamic instabilities. In particular, cylindrical implosions are useful for studying the influence of a magnetic field thanks to their axial symmetry. Here we present experimental results from cylindrical implosions on the OMEGA-60 laser using a 40-beam, 14.5 kJ, 1.5 ns drive and an initial seed magnetic field of B0 = 24 T along the axis of the targets, compared with reference results without an imposed B-field. Implosions were characterized using time-resolved X-ray imaging from two orthogonal lines of sight. We found that the data agree well with magnetohydrodynamic simulations once radiation transport within the imploding plasma is considered. We show that for a correct interpretation of the data in this type of experiments, explicit radiation transport must be taken into account.