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The near vacuum campaign on the National Ignition Facility has concentrated its efforts over the last year on finding the optimum target geometry to drive a symmetric implosion at high convergence ratio (30×). As the hohlraum walls are not tamped with gas, the hohlraum is filling with gold plasma and the challenge resides in depositing enough energy in the hohlraum before it fills up. Hohlraum filling is believed to cause symmetry swings late in the pulse that are detrimental to the symmetry of the hot spot at high convergence. This paper describes a series of experiments carried out to examine the effect of increasing the distance between the hohlraum wall and the capsule (case to capsule ratio) on the symmetry of the hot spot. These experiments have shown that smaller Case to Capsule Ratio (CCR of 2.87 and 3.1) resulted in oblate implosions that could not be tuned round. Larger CCR (3.4) led to a prolate implosion at convergence 30× implying that inner beam propagation at large CCR is not impeded by the expanding hohlraum plasma. A Case to Capsule ratio of 3.4 is a promising geometry to design a round implosion but in a smaller hohlraum where the hohlraum losses are lower, enabling a wider cone fraction range to adjust symmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a simple mechanistic interpretation of the resonant wave-particle interaction of Landau. For the simple case of a Langmuir wave in a Vlasov plasma, the non-resonant electrons satisfy an oscillator equation that is driven resonantly by the bare electric field from the resonant electrons, and in the case of wave damping, this complex driver field is of a phase to reduce the oscillation amplitude. The wave-particle resonant interaction also occurs in waves governed by 2D E×B drift dynamics, such as a diocotron wave. In this case, the bare electric field from the resonant electrons causes E×B drift motion back in the core plasma, reducing the amplitude of the wave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]