Proton pinhole imaging on the National Ignition Facility

A B Zylstra; H-S Park; J S Ross; F Fiuza; J A Frenje; D P Higginson; C Huntington; C K Li; R D Petrasso; B Pollock; B Remington; H G Rinderknecht; D Ryutov; F H Séguin; D Turnbull; S C Wilks

doi:10.1063/1.4959782

Proton pinhole imaging on the National Ignition Facility

Rev Sci Instrum. 2016 Nov;87(11):11E704. doi: 10.1063/1.4959782.

Authors

A B Zylstra¹, H-S Park², J S Ross², F Fiuza³, J A Frenje⁴, D P Higginson², C Huntington², C K Li⁴, R D Petrasso⁴, B Pollock², B Remington², H G Rinderknecht², D Ryutov², F H Séguin⁴, D Turnbull², S C Wilks²

Affiliations

¹ Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA.
² Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550, USA.
³ SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA.
⁴ Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.

PMID: 27910515
DOI: 10.1063/1.4959782

Abstract

Pinhole imaging of large (mm scale) carbon-deuterium (CD) plasmas by proton self-emission has been used for the first time to study the microphysics of shock formation, which is of astrophysical relevance. The 3 MeV deuterium-deuterium (DD) fusion proton self-emission from these plasmas is imaged using a novel pinhole imaging system, with up to five different 1 mm diameter pinholes positioned 25 cm from target-chamber center. CR39 is used as the detector medium, positioned at 100 cm distance from the pinhole for a magnification of 4 ×. A Wiener deconvolution algorithm is numerically demonstrated and used to interpret the images. When the spatial morphology is known, this algorithm accurately reproduces the size of features larger than about half the pinhole diameter. For these astrophysical plasma experiments on the National Ignition Facility, this provides a strong constraint on simulation modeling of the experiment.