Extremes: violent events close up

Nigel C Woolsey York Plasma Institute Department of Physics nigel.woolsey@york.ac.uk

Cassiopeia A, in X-rays at 300 yrs NASA/CXC/SAO

Outline
High power lasers

Laser-plasma physics

Fusion (inertial confinement fusion, ICF)

Laboratory astrophysics

Collaborations & funding

My students and post docs Ozgur, Rachel and Rob United Kingdom Central Laser Facility, Culham Centre for Fusion, Oxford France Ecole Polytechnique, CEA, lObservatoire de Paris Japan Osaka University (ILE & Graduate School) USA Livermore (LLNL), Rochester (LLE), Princeton

Part 1

High energy, high power lasers

These are big, National Ignition Facility occupies space of 3 football pitches

Expensive and massive

NIF has 192 beams and delivers 0.5 PW

The 192 beams go to a 10 metre target chamber

This is the best option for laser fusion

The oscillator (start here with nJs)

The Vulcan ultra-intense laser

1 PW (1015 W) www.clf.rl.ac.uk

Stretch in time <0.5ps 1000ps

Focus the beam diameter of ~1 m to 10-5 m Control room

More energy (capacitor bank)

Compress in time (back to 0.5ps) Amplifiers Even more More amplifiers amplifiers (500 J)!

Nd:Glass lasers
These lasers operate at a wavelength of 1.53 m (photon energy ~1eV)

For many applications the laser wavelength is converted to the UV a process called harmonic conversion
3rd harmonic gives 1.053 m/3 = 0.351 m This increases the plasma density (by factor 10) at which the laser is absorbed It increases the intensity (by factor 10) at which resonance absorption dominates

Part 2

Laser-plasma physics
Use lasers to create scaled dynamical systems (e.g. shocks)

What happens
Laser first hits a solid Electrons absorb photons until energies exceed the work function (called multi-photon absorption) Occurs at intensities of ~109 W/cm2 (note mixed units)
These electrons then collide with ions efficiently absorbing laser energy (called collisional absorption or inverse bremsstrahlung) Occurs at intensities up to 1016 W/cm2 Above 1016 W/cm2 resonance (or collisionless) absorption dominates

Use lasers to deposit lots of energy into small volumes

Initial laser ablation from solid surface Laser
laser

c
laser

pe

nee2 me 0

Main part of laser pulse interacts with plasma plume, absorbed up to a critical density Critical density = density at which plasma frequency equals laser frequency me c 2 10 21 ncrit 4 2 2 2 cm 2 e laser m laser

Pressure generated by a modest laser

Laser
1 mm

Shocked or ramped

Intensity
I Energy spot area time 103 J

z
(0.05 cm)2 (10
9

s)

1014 Wcm

Pressure from momentum balance, p = momentum flux

Pabl Mbar

I14 21 m

23

1 21 1
F A

23

20 Mbar
2 1012 Pa

Apply Newtons 2nd law: P = F/Area

= 2.7 gcm-3 z = 50 m

zg

a 1012 g 0

Part 3

What is inertial confinement fusion?

Use lasers to create scaled dynamical systems (e.g. shocks)

Use deuterium and tritium isotopes of H

D + T collide, tunnel, fuse and release energy Q = 17.6 MeV

Neutron carries away bulk of the energy (14.1MeV) 3.5 MeV particle is important for ignition and burn Energy released from fusion is captured in a blanket & used to heat a steam turbine

particle ignition and burn

The conditions (e.g. temperatures) needed are demanding. So heat a small part of the DT to produce fusion and then the particle to ignite and burn the rest

The density-radius product (rho-r)

Need to re-use of boot strap the particles

The particles released by DT reaction reabsorbed in hot region if rho-r > 0.3g/cm2 (~ the particle range) In solid density (0.22 g/cm3) this requires cms of DT This is a lot. Risky! And Uncontrolled.

The controlled ICF approach ..

Take a small (1 mg) of DT, contain and freeze this a spherical capsule
Frozen DT (18 K) density is 0.22 g/cm3

The next step is to compress this x1000 solid density

At x1000 solid density heat a central region to form a hot spot

Lasers compress the capsule

Reach 1000x solid density

1.

2.

3.

4.

Lasers

Acceleration

Compression

Ignition

The trick is to do this with a laser, keeping the DT cool, and using the hot spot particles to heat the material

Use deuterium and tritium isotopes of H

The isotopes of hydrogen collide, fuse and release energy This all occurs very quickly

Fusion lasts around 10 ps

Problems
Rayleigh-Taylor fluid instability
This problem is solved by ensuring extremely uniform capsules and laser focal spots

Electron preheat
The laser generates high-energy electrons via resonance absorption, and plasma instabilities Solved (in part) by using short wavelength, UV, lasers

These are major & interesting challenges today

In a power plant the process needs repeating 5 to 10x a second

Part 4 supernova remnant is an example of shock

Credit: NASA

What is laboratory astrophysics?

Use lasers to create scaled dynamical systems (e.g. shocks)

Plasma physics is important to

Cosmic microwave background Large scale structure Reionisation epoch It is possible to address Gravitational collapse some aspects of these in the laboratory Primordial magnetic field Galactic formation Stellar evolution Shocks & remnants of a Nuclear reactions supernova explosion Relativistic processes Cosmic rays Jets Gamma Ray Bursters

Interstellar medium
The local interstellar medium (ISM) composition is typical
Component Energy density Pressure (J/m3)

Stellar radiation
Cosmic microwave Turbulent motion Cosmic rays

0.7 eV/cm3
0.4 eV/cm3 0.5 eV/cm3 1.6 eV/cm3

1.1
6.4 8.0 2.6

10-13 Pa
10-14 Pa 10-14 Pa 10-13 Pa

Magnetic field

1.5 eV/cm3

2.4

10-13 Pa

Energy density of all components ~ 1 eV/cm3 Supernovae and supernova remnants drive cosmic rays and grow magnetic fields What can experiment tell us?

The typical supernova remnant

Launches 1 solar mass 10,000 km/s 1044 J
Pressure pressure: 10-7 Pa 1000 yrs old 30 light-yrs across Into the ISM 1 particle / cm3 few G B field blue x-ray yellowish optical red radio

Astronomy Picture of the Day 4th June, 2008

It can be done!
Quantity SNR Laser 5x10-3 m 500 ps 1018 cm-3 108 cm/s 20 T

rSNR

arlab
b c lab lab cv b lab

Distance 3x1016 m Time Density 100 yrs 1 cm-3

SNR = a SNR

v SNR =

Speed 109 cm/s Magnetic 10-10 T

B SNR = cBlab

Snapshot scaling is based on ideal MHD (Ryutov et al.) Create collisionless shocks in the laboratory
Woolsey et al., Phys Plasmas 8, 2439 (2001)

Experimental set-up showing the laser beams and diagnostics configuration.

G Gregori et al. Nature 481, 480-483 (2012) doi:10.1038/nature10747

Plasma Jets
Plasma jets will be discussed by Chris Gregory on Friday

2 mm

Jets in 100mb He:+3, +4,+5 ns Top: phasemaps Bottom: electron maps

Shadowgraph and self emission taken at the same time (85 ns) for the same shot

Gregory, et al, Phys Plasmas (2010); ApJ (2008); PPCF (2008) Waugh et al, Astrophys. Space Sci. (2009)

Why lab astro

Good science that complements observations & numerical simulations Detail of shocks and plasma conditions that are superior to astrophysical observations Repeatable, controllable Access conditions that are inaccessible to numerical simulation study extended spatial and temporal scales Once scaled, can study additional non-scalable physics non-linear, multi-scale physics There are limitations too

Plasma temperatures and densities

106
Temperature (eV)

104 102 100

10-2
10-4

RELATIVISTIC PLASMAS kBT=mc2 MagnetoMFE sphere IFE Solar Solar CLASSICAL Interior Corona PLASMAS Lightning Solar DisThermal White Wind charge processing Dwarfs IonoQUANTUM sphere PLASMAS NonEF=e2n1/3 strongly neutral Electrons in coupled Metals plasmas

Pulsar

Re

LH u

Pe
Re m

LH u
LH u Dm

1010

1020 Density (cm-3)

1030

Per

LH u
R

Astronomical systems are large, LH is huge Flow speeds, u are also large Use magneto-hydrodynamics small viscosities, resistivities and diffusivities

Conclude
The science possible with high energy, high power laser is diverse weve looked at: Fusion: addressing the energy need Astrophysics: advancing fundamental knowledge Both rely on advances in Plasma physics Laser technology Computational modelling They use very similar tools by pursuing one we pursue the other

Thank you

Suggested papers
Lab astro
Gregori et al. Nature 481, 480 (2012) H-S Park et al. High Energy Density Physics 8, 38e45 (2012) Kuramitsu et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 175002 (2011) Woolsey et al. Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 46, B397-B405 (2004)

ICF
Dunne et al. Nature Physics 2, 2 (2006) Pasley and Stephens, Phys. Plasmas 14, 054501, (2007) Ribeyre et al Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 50 025007 (2008 ) Green et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 015003 (2008) Woolsey et al. Phys. Rev. E 53, 6396, (1996)

Latest updates (Nov 2011)

Presented at the annual plasma meeting in USA
http://pop.aip.org/53rd_meeting

Astrophysical jets (tutorial)

http://pop.aip.org/polopoly_fs/1.2688788!/menu/standard/file/FR 1Stone.pdf http://www.sciencemag.org/content/284/5419/1488

Inertial confinement fusion

http://pop.aip.org/polopoly_fs/1.2688123!/menu/standard/file/BI3 Glenzer.pdf LIFE (https://life.llnl.gov/), HiPER (http://www.hiper-laser.org/)