American Institute of Physics, Physics of Plasmas, 5(21), p. 056314
DOI: 10.1063/1.4874330
2014 IEEE 41st International Conference on Plasma Sciences (ICOPS) held with 2014 IEEE International Conference on High-Power Particle Beams (BEAMS)
DOI: 10.1109/plasma.2014.7012392
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The “High-Foot” platform manipulates the laser pulse-shape coming from the National Ignition Facility laser to create an indirect drive 3-shock implosion that is significantly more robust against instability growth involving the ablator and also modestly reduces implosion convergence ratio. This strategy gives up on theoretical high-gain in an inertial confinement fusion implosion in order to obtain better control of the implosion and bring experimental performance in-line with calculated performance, yet keeps the absolute capsule performance relatively high. In this paper, we will cover the various experimental and theoretical motivations for the high-foot drive as well as cover the experimental results that have come out of the high-foot experimental campaign. At the time of this writing, the high-foot implosion has demonstrated record total deuterium-tritium yields ( ) with low levels of inferred mix, excellent agreement with implosion simulations, fuel energy gains exceeding unity, and evidence for the “bootstrapping” associated with alpha-particle self-heating. 9.3 × 10 15