INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECT OF LARGE-SCALE SHELL ASYMMETRY ON ISKRA-5TARGET OPERATION

Experiments designed to investigate the effect of a controlled large-s cale asymmetry of a shell containing deuterium-tritium fuel on the she ll compression and neutron production under indirect (x-ray) action ar e performed on the Iskra-5 laser fusion device. The uniformity of the x radiation near the target is not worse than 3%, and the shell asymme try is varied from 30 to 100%. The observed decrease of the experiment al neutron yield as compared with experiments using symmetric targets is in satisfactory agreement with two-dimensional calculations. (C) 19 98 American Institute of Physics.