Effect of soft and hard x-rays on shock propagation, preheating and ablation characteristics in pure and doped Be ablators

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the performance of pure and doped Be ablators used for Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) pellets in terms of shock velocity, shock breakout temperature, preheat temperature and mass ablation rate through radiation hydrodynamic (RHD) simulations. For this study, we apply a constant radiation profile (drive temperatures varying from 120 -200 eV) consisting of a low frequency Planck spectrum (soft x-rays) and a high frequency Gaussian spectrum (hard x-rays, commonly termed as "M-band") on a planar foil of the ablator. The fraction of energy density in the hard x-ray spectrum (α) has been varied from 0 to 0.25. In pure Be, at lower drive temperatures, the shock velocities are found to rise slowly with α. Beyond 170 eV, the shock velocities do not change with α. The predominant effect of hard x-rays is to preheat the ablator ahead of the shock front. Steady rise in preheat temperature and shock breakout temperature is observed on increasing the fraction of hard x-rays. Also, mass ablation rates in Be are found to be unaffected by hard x-rays. Preheating can be mitigated by doping Be with a mid-Z element Cu as its opacity is much higher in the high frequency region. On doping Be with 1% Cu, the shock velocities decrease slightly compared to pure Be. However, higher shock velocities are observed on increasing the fraction of M-band. Similar to pure Be, preheat and shock breakout temperatures have a strong dependence on α. We observe significant decrease in shock breakout and maximum preheat temperature in doped Be foil. Steady rise in these temperatures is observed on increasing α. Unlike pure Be, the mass ablation rate is found to increase slowly with M-band fraction in Cu doped Be. We have proposed new scaling relations for shock velocity, shock breakout temperature, maximum preheat temperature and mass