MEASUREMENTS OF CORE AND PUSHER CONDITIONS IN SURROGATE CAPSULE IMPLOSIONS ON THE OMEGA-LASER SYSTEM

Experiments have been carried out on the 60-beam, 30 kJ OMEGA laser sy stem [T. R. Boehly er al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)] as part of an integrated program to diagnose all phases of direct-drive capsule imp losions. Laser-imprint levels and Rayleigh-Taylor growth rates associa ted with the spherical implosions have been inferred from planar-foil radiography experiments. In spherical targets, measurements of the com bined effects of imprint and unstable growth at the ablation surface h ave been carried out using the burnthrough technique [J. Delettrez et al., Phys. Plasmas 1, 2342 (1994)]. Target behavior during the deceler ation phase has been investigated using a series of surrogate cryogeni c capsules in which the main fuel layer is represented by a Ti-doped C H shell and the hot spot is represented by an Ar-doped deuterium fill gas. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.