Experimental Demonstration of dynamically shell formation for DD-IFE

In August a 2022 proof-of-principle experiment was carried out at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics LLE (Rochester, USA) to validate a new concept of IFE target proposed in [1]. In this experiment we used a laser driven shock to first compress and heat a spherical foam target acting as a surrogate for the liquid D-T. This target develops a thermally expanding plasma cloud after shock bounce from the center and formation of a blast wave. The cloud expansion is slowed and finally reversed so as to lead to its compression by a sequence of convergent shocks, which are launched by a short ad powerful laser pulse. Because of the local compression of mass at the periphery of this plasma-cloud, a dense plasma shell is formed around a lower density central region. The dynamics of the expanding plasma cloud and formation of the dense shell was diagnosed using x-ray streak and backlighting radiography. The results are compared with numerical simulations.