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Physically realized electron gas systems usually reside in either the quantum non-degenerate or fully degenerate limit, where the average de Broglie wavelength of the thermal electrons becomes comparable with the interparticle distance between electrons. A few systems, such as young brown dwarfs and the cold dense fuels created in imploded cryogenic capsules at the National Ignition Facility, lie between these two limits and are partially degenerate. The National Ignition Facility has the unique capability of varying the electron quantum degeneracy by adjusting the laser drive used to implode the capsules. This allows experimental studies of the effects of the degeneracy level on plasma transport properties. By measuring rare nuclear reactions in these cold dense fuels, we show that the electron stopping power, which is the rate of energy loss per unit distance travelled by a charged particle, changes with increasing electron density. We observe a quantum-induced shift in the peak of the stopping power using diagnostics that measure above and below this peak. The observed changes in the stopping power are shown to be unique to the transition region between non-degenerate and degenerate plasmas. Our results support the screening models applied to partially degenerate astrophysical systems such as young brown dwarfs. Transitions between non-degenerate and degenerate plasma are observed in laser-driven implosions of cryogenic capsules at the National Ignition Facility. The observed partially degenerate regime is relevant to the physics of young brown dwarfs.

A technology has been developed that utilizes CO2 in concrete curing to improve the concrete properties. This commercialized process is used by more than 50 ready-mix and concrete product sites across the United States and Canada. Ready mix and concrete product companies are currently using commercial, food-grade CO2 at a high cost. The long-term objective is to extract CO2 from cement plants and then utilize it in ready-mix concrete and concrete products made with the cement that produced the CO2, thus closing the loop. This concept has been presented as one of the numerous projects in the Carbon XPrize and has been selected as one of the 27 projects approved for round 2.

The Opacity Platform on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) has been developed to measure iron opacities at varying densities and temperatures relevant to the solar interior and to verify recent experimental results obtained at the Sandia Z-machine, that diverge from theory. The first set of NIF experiments collected iron opacity data at ∼150 eV to 160 eV and an electron density of ∼7 × 1021 cm−3, with a goal to study temperatures up to ∼210 eV, with electron densities of up to ∼3 × 1022 cm−3. Among several techniques used to infer the temperature of the heated Fe sample, the absolutely calibrated DANTE-2 filtered diode array routinely provides measurements of the hohlraum conditions near the sample. However, the DANTE-2 temperatures are consistently low compared to pre-shot LASNEX simulations for a range of laser drive energies. We have re-evaluated the estimated uncertainty in the reported DANTE-2 temperatures and also the error generated by varying channel participation in the data analysis. An uncertainty of ±5% or better can be achieved with appropriate spectral coverage, channel participation, and metrology of the viewing slot.

Mental health clients with serious mental illness in urban settings experience multiple chronic stresses related to poverty, unemployment, discrimination, homelessness, incarceration, hospitalization, posttraumatic stress disorder, pain syndromes, traumatic brain injury, and other problems. Substance use disorder exacerbates these difficulties. This study examined the efficacy of algorithm-driven substance use disorder treatments for 305 inner-city mental health clients with multiple challenges. Researchers assessed substance use quarterly using a combination of standardized self-reports and case manager ratings. Of the 305 multiply impaired clients who began treatment, 200 (66%) completed 2 years of treatment. One fourth (n = 53) of the completers were responders who developed abstinence and improved community function; one half (n = 97) were partial responders, who reduced substance use but did not become abstinent; and one fourth (n = 50) were nonresponders. Evidence-based interventions for substance use disorder can be effective for multiply impaired, inner-city clients, but numerous complications may hinder recovery.

A European consortium of 15 laboratories across nine nations have worked together under the EUROFusion Enabling Research grants for the past decade with three principle objectives. These are: (a) investigating obstacles to ignition on megaJoule-class laser facilities; (b) investigating novel alternative approaches to ignition, including basic studies for fast ignition (both electron and ion-driven), auxiliary heating, shock ignition, etc.; and (c) developing technologies that will be required in the future for a fusion reactor. A brief overview of these activities, presented here, along with new calculations relates the concept of auxiliary heating of inertial fusion targets, and provides possible future directions of research and development for the updated European Roadmap that is due at the end of 2020. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Prospects for high gain inertial fusion energy (part 2)’.

A sustainable burn platform through inertial confinement fusion (ICF) has been an ongoing challenge for over 50 years. Mitigating engineering limitations and improving the current design involves an understanding of the complex coupling of physical processes. While sophisticated simulations codes are used to model ICF implosions, these tools contain necessary numerical approximation but miss physical processes that limit predictive capability. Identification of relationships between controllable design inputs to ICF experiments and measurable outcomes (e.g. yield, shape) from performed experiments can help guide the future design of experiments and development of simulation codes, to potentially improve the accuracy of the computational models used to simulate ICF experiments. We use sparse matrix decomposition methods to identify clusters of a few related design variables. Sparse principal component analysis (SPCA) identifies groupings that are related to the physical origin of the variables (laser, hohlraum, and capsule). A variable importance analysis finds that in addition to variables highly correlated with neutron yield such as picket power and laser energy, variables that represent a dramatic change of the ICF design such as number of pulse steps are also very important. The obtained sparse components are then used to train a random forest (RF) surrogate for predicting total yield. The RF performance on the training and testing data compares with the performance of the RF surrogate trained using all design variables considered. This work is intended to inform design changes in future ICF experiments by augmenting the expert intuition and simulations results., 8 pages, 7 figures

Building a sustainable burn platform in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) requires an understanding of the complex coupling of physical processes and the effects that key experimental design changes have on implosion performance. While simulation codes are used to model ICF implosions, incomplete physics and the need for approximations deteriorate their predictive capability. Identification of relationships between controllable design inputs and measurable outcomes can help guide the future design of experiments and development of simulation codes, which can potentially improve the accuracy of the computational models used to simulate ICF implosions. In this paper, we leverage developments in machine learning (ML) and methods for ML feature importance/sensitivity analysis to identify complex relationships in ways that are difficult to process using expert judgment alone. We present work using random forest (RF) regression for prediction of yield, velocity, and other experimental outcomes given a suite of design parameters, along with an assessment of important relationships and uncertainties in the prediction model. We show that RF models are capable of learning and predicting on ICF experimental data with high accuracy, and we extract feature importance metrics that provide insight into the physical significance of different controllable design inputs for various ICF design configurations. These results can be used to augment expert intuition and simulation results for optimal design of future ICF experiments., 10 pages, 9 figures. Published in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, July 2021 (see Journal Reference info)

Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth is shown to be hydrodynamically scale invariant in convergent cylindrical implosions for targets that varied in radial dimension and implosion timescale by a factor of 3. The targets were driven directly by laser irradiation providing a short impulse, and instability growth at an embedded aluminum interface occurs as it converges radially inward by a factor of 2.25 and decelerates on a central foam core. Late-time growth factors of 14 are observed for a single-mode m=20 azimuthal perturbation at both scales, despite the differences in laser drive conditions between the experimental facilities, consistent with predictions from radiation-hydrodynamics simulations. This platform enables detailed investigations into the limits of hydrodynamic scaling in high-energy-density systems.

Energy-transport effects can alter the structure that develops as a supernova evolves into a supernova remnant. The Rayleigh–Taylor instability is thought to produce structure at the interface between the stellar ejecta and the circumstellar matter, based on simple models and hydrodynamic simulations. Here we report experimental results from the National Ignition Facility to explore how large energy fluxes, which are present in supernovae, affect this structure. We observed a reduction in Rayleigh–Taylor growth. In analyzing the comparison with supernova SN1993J, a Type II supernova, we found that the energy fluxes produced by heat conduction appear to be larger than the radiative energy fluxes, and large enough to have dramatic consequences. No reported astrophysical simulations have included radiation and heat conduction self-consistently in modeling supernova remnants and these dynamics should be noted in the understanding of young supernova remnants., Radiation and conduction are generally considered as the main energy transport mechanisms for the evolution of early supernova remnants. Here the authors experimentally show the role of electron heat transfer on the growth of Rayleigh–Taylor instability in young supernova remnants.

The double-shell platform fielded at the National Ignition Facility requires developments in new machining techniques and robotic assembly stations to meet the experimental specifications. Current double-shell target designs use a dense high-Z inner shell, a foam cushion, and a low-Z outer shell. The design requires that the inner shell be gas filled using a fill tube. This tube impacts the entire machining and assembly design. Other intermediate physics designs have to be fielded to answer physics questions and advance the technology to be able to fabricate the full point design in the near future. One of these intermediate designs is a mid-Z imaging design. The methods of designing, fabricating, and characterizing each of the major components of an imaging double shell are discussed with an emphasis on the fabrication of the machined outer metal shell.

Experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) using targets containing a deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel layer have, until recently, required that a high-quality layer of solid D-T (herein referred to as an ice layer) be formed in the capsule. The development of a process to line the inner surface of a target capsule with a foam layer of a thickness that is typical of ice layers has resulted in the ability to field targets with liquid layers wetting the foam. Successful fielding of liquid-layer targets on NIF required not only a foam-lined capsule but also changes to the capsule filling process and the manner with which the inventory is maintained in the capsule. Additionally, changes to target heater power and the temperature drops across target components were required in order to achieve the desired range of shot temperatures. These changes and the target’s performance during four target shots on NIF are discussed.

Experiments and analysis in the 2 years since the 2015 Target Fabrication Meeting have resulted in further evolution of the requirements for high-performance layered implosions. This paper is a status update on the experimental program and supporting modeling, with emphasis on the implications for fabrication requirements. Previous work on the capsule support has continued, with various other support options being explored in experiments and modeling. Work also continues on ablator composition nonuniformities, with important new results from CH experiments on Omega, and the first three-dimensional X-ray transmission measurements of Be capsules on the National Ignition Facility. Work on hohlraums continues to include near-vacuum hohlraums and U hohlraums without a gold lining. Overall, the understanding that has been achieved, along with the progress in fabrication technology, represents good continuing progress toward the goal of fusion in the laboratory.

Power costs are an increasing component of overall cement production costs. Power costs will continue to climb at an accelerated rate as power plants are required to meet new environmental standards and move towards zero CO2 emissions. These increased costs will be passed on to consumers, possibly making power the most expensive component in cement manufacturing costs. Many plants have difficulty in determining how power is used within the plant and typically only have high-level power metering. Power models can be easily built and tuned to give accurate power consumption figures. Power consumption can then be estimated by equipment type, plant area or shop, plant motor control center, and/or plant power meter. These models have been in existence for many years and have been used by equipment suppliers to estimate and guarantee cement power consumption for new installations. This paper demonstrates how to build and tune a plant power consumption model. Although the basis for the paper is a full cement plant, the model can be easily used in other industries as well.

Thomson scattering is used to detect the spectra of Langmuir waves driven through the backward stimulated Raman scattering process in a diffraction limited laser focal spot. Measured Langmuir wave spectral frequencies are found to vary in time and have broadened spectral power, consistent with a nonlinear frequency shift of the driven Langmuir wave due to electron-trapping. Broadening of the Langmuir wave spectral power is observed to decrease in time, consistent with measured variations in the frequency shift of the driven Langmuir waves. Furthermore, the observed spectral broadening is consistent with the temporally short (ps), bursty nature of backward stimulated Raman scattered light observed in simulations that cannot be resolved by the Thomson scattering diagnostic. Comparison of the broadened spectrum with time integrated spectra from two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations shows favorable comparison in the broadened spectral widths, supporting the supposition of electron-trapping induced, nonlinear shifting of daughter Langmuir wave frequencies.

Predicting and matching radiation wave propagation with computational models has proven difficult. Information provided by experiments studying radiation flow has been limited when only radiation breakout is measured. We have developed the COAX (co-axial) diagnostic platform to provide spatial temperature profiles of a radiation wave through low density foams as a more detailed constraint for simulations. COAX uses a standard, laser-driven OMEGA-60 halfraum to drive radiation down a titanium-laden silicon oxide foam. Point-projection X-ray absorption spectroscopy perpendicular to the radiation flow measures the spatial profile of titanium ionization. The spectroscopic measurement utilizes a broadband capsule backlighter. Imaging and streak spectroscopy are used to characterize the size and spectrum of this source. Radiography provides an additional constraint by capturing the developing shock as the radiation flow becomes subsonic. The DANTE diagnostic is used to measure the halfraum temperature. We provide a spectroscopic analysis of COAX data to determine temperature, and we describe experimental sources of uncertainty. The temperature is obtained by comparison to multi-temperature synthetic spectra post-processed from radiation-hydrodynamics simulations. Quantitative comparison between data and synthetic spectra generated from temperature profiles at relevant simulation times enable determination of a peak temperature of 114 ± 8 eV at 265 ± 22.4 μ m from the halfraum. This represents an improvement over the temperature uncertainties of previous radiation flow experiments. Further refinements to the spectroscopic analysis could achieve ± 4 eV. The combination between space-resolved spectroscopy and radiography enables us to determine the distance from the halfraum of both the radiation front and the shock front at the time of measurement. For the example shown in this paper the radiation front position is 600–630 μ m at 3.43 ± 0.16 ns and the shock front position is 633 μ m at 3.3 ± 0.24 ns.

Converting and using the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to deliver 527 nm light instead of its current 351 nm would allow the laser to deliver more energy and power to ignition targets. We update previous 527 nm target design work to reflect more contemporary target designs using high-density carbon capsules and low density helium gas filled Hohlraums. We extend single shell capsule designs based on current experimental results to higher energy and power and also explore double shell capsules, both driven by green light. These studies were completed using detailed pulse shapes found for targets that converged with acceptable 2D implosion symmetries and then used the Lava Lamp II code to confirm their feasibility at NIF. A 1.2× dimensional scaleup of one tuned NIF target at the limit of its current 351 nm capabilities and shot 170827 uses 3.3 MJ, at the limit of the current NIF's 527 nm capability. With the less-structured pulse of a double shell target, 3.7 MJ could be delivered by the laser. Our LPI calculations do not preclude operation at 527 nm, particularly for low fill Hohlraums, and suggest that the stimulated Raman backscatter may be no worse than the small quantities seen in 170827; stimulated forward Raman scattering may be present. If Stimulated Brillouin Scattering is too great, the much greater laser bandwidth available at 527 nm could be used to decrease backscatter. These larger targets with higher energy and power may offer a better chance of achieving ignition with only modest changes to the NIF laser.

X-ray opacity is a crucial factor of all radiation-hydrodynamics calculations, yet it is one of the least validated of the material properties in the simulation codes. Recent opacity experiments at the Sandia Z-machine have shown up to factors of two discrepancies between theory and experiment, casting doubt on the validity of the opacity models. Therefore, a new experimental opacity platform is being developed on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) not only to verify the Z-machine experimental results but also to extend the experiments to other temperatures and densities. The first experiments will be directed towards measuring the opacity of iron at a temperature of ∼160 eV and an electron density of ∼7 × 1021 cm−3. Preliminary experiments on NIF have demonstrated the ability to create a sufficiently bright point backlighter using an imploding plastic capsule and also a hohlraum that can heat the opacity sample to the desired conditions. The first of these iron opacity experiments is expected to be performed in 2017.

Measurements of the mass ablation rate of aluminum (Al) have been completed at the Omega Laser Facility. These measurements show that the mass-ablation rate of Al is higher than plastic (CH), comparable to high density carbon (HDC), and lower than beryllium. The mass-ablation rate is consistent with predictions using a 1D Lagrangian code, Helios. The results suggest Al capsules have a reasonable ablation pressure even with a higher albedo than beryllium or carbon ablators and further investigation into the viability of Al capsules for ignition should be pursued. Keywords: Inertial confinement fusion ablator, Aluminum ablator, Aluminum capsule, X-ray mass ablation rate, Alternate ablator, PACS codes: 52.57.-z, 52.57.Fg, 52.57.Bc

Drive systems for large vertical mills have proven to be a reliability issue for many cement producers. As mill sizes have increased over time the size of the motors and corresponding gear boxes have increased as well. The lack of reliability of these large and expensive drive sets has led to two outcomes; equipment suppliers have worked diligently to improve drive system design to provide a more robust drive. At the same time equipment owners have taken up different strategies to minimize potential losses from drive system failures.This paper will explore the evolution of vertical mill drive system designs. It will also focus on some of the strategies used by cement producers to offset potential losses from large vertical mill drive system failures. It will also explore techniques to monitor and preserve the operation of these drive systems.

Computer processing power has grown exponentially over the past decades. At the same time the sophistication of sensors has increased, providing more numerous and accurate data points for control. Based on these trends it would seem that expert systems would be more capable and more in demand than ever. However, many plants and companies have struggled to maximize the benefits of expert control systems.Expert control has been shown to provide increased operational efficiency with lower emission levels and reduced costs. However, these targets can be elusive if the expert system is not properly understood and the prerequisites for success not followed. This paper explores some of the issues that inhibit expert control system operation. The paper provides some guidelines for optimizing existing expert control systems and provides prerequisites for companies considering the installation of expert control systems.

One large international cement producer made an assessment of the common characteristics of their plants with the best technical performance. The best performance was defined as plants with consistently high uptimes as well as consistent product quality, low energy consumption, excellent environmental performance and low production costs. On further investigation it was seen that these plants also had the best safety records. The company then investigated further to determine what could be critical factors in this success across all technical platforms and linked closely to safety performance.It was found that the keys to safety excellence and technical performance could be summarized in three critical areas. First, a highly engaged plant management team with clearly stated and widely communicated objectives and with open and transparent communications at all levels. The second factor, was having robust work processes in the plant. The third factor was having highly competent personnel in the key positions critical to success. Reflection would indicate that these factors should not only give excellent technical results, but should also provide for a high regard for safety.

One of the difficulties in developing accurate numerical models of radiation flow in a coupled radiation-hydrodynamics setting is accurately modeling the transmission across a boundary layer. The COAX experiment is a platform design to test this transmission including standard radiograph and flux diagnostics as well as a temperature diagnostic measuring the population of excitation levels and ionization states of a dopant embedded within the target material. Using a broad range of simulations, we study the experimental errors in this temperature diagnostic. We conclude with proposed physics experiments that show features that are much stronger than the experimental errors and provide the means to study transport models., Comment: 19 pages, 19 figures, accepted by HEDP

Virtual Reality (VR) offers the opportunity to display data, instrumentation, and experimental setups in three dimensions and gives the user the ability to interact with the objects. This technology moves visualization beyond two-dimensional projections on a flat screen with a fixed field of view in which a keyboard or another similar controller is needed to change the view. Advances in both hardware and software for VR make it possible for the non-expert to develop visualization tools for scientific applications both for viewing and for sharing data or diagnostic hardware between users in three dimensions. This manuscript describes application development using two VR software tools, Unity gaming engine and A-frame, for visualizing data and high energy physics targets.

In inertial confinement fusion (ICF), x-ray radiography is a critical diagnostic for measuring implosion dynamics, which contain rich three-dimensional (3D) information. Traditional methods for reconstructing 3D volumes from 2D radiographs, such as filtered backprojection, require radiographs from at least two different angles or lines of sight (LOS). In ICF experiments, the space for diagnostics is limited, and cameras that can operate on fast timescales are expensive to implement, limiting the number of projections that can be acquired. To improve the imaging quality as a result of this limitation, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have recently been shown to be capable of producing 3D models from visible light images or medical x-ray images rendered by volumetric computed tomography. We propose a CNN to reconstruct 3D ICF spherical shells from single radiographs. We also examine the sensitivity of the 3D reconstruction to different illumination models using preprocessing techniques such as pseudo-flatfielding. To resolve the issue of the lack of 3D supervision, we show that training the CNN utilizing synthetic radiographs produced by known simulation methods allows for reconstruction of experimental data as long as the experimental data are similar to the synthetic data. We also show that the CNN allows for 3D reconstruction of shells that possess low mode asymmetries. Further comparisons of the 3D reconstructions with direct multiple LOS measurements are justified.

An iterative forward modeling approach has been developed and applied to the analysis of radiography data from cylindrical Rayleigh-Taylor instability studies performed at the Omega laser facility. Synthetic radiographs are generated and iterated using the Bayes’ Inference Engine [1] to produce maximum likelihood estimates for the time-dependent amplitude of deceleration-phase Rayleigh-Taylor modes seeded by a sinusoidal perturbation in the aluminum marker layer. This iterative forward modeling approach self-consistently fits the magnification and parallax in the image, both of which are sensitive at this scale (~13x magnification) to misalignments of the pinhole smaller than 200 μm. Systematic errors in the inference of growth factor as large as 10% have been identified and eliminated by this technique. Furthermore, the self-consistent modeling of image parallax reveals that these implosions are not elliptical as they may appear to the casual observer, but indeed highly symmetric. The regularizing priors adopted here, and further constraints that might be applied in future work, reduce experimental uncertainties and lend greater statistical significance to comparisons with hydrodynamic modeling.

The shear experiments are designed to investigate the transition to turbulence of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability driven by counter-propagating shear flows. The shear targets for the National Igni...

Experiments and analysis in the 3 years since the 2012 Target Fabrication Meeting have resulted in significant improvement in understanding of the requirements for high-performance layered implosio...

Inertial confinement fusion, based on laser-heating a deuterium–tritium mixture, is one of the approaches towards energy production from fusion reactions. Now, record energy-yield experiments are reported—bringing us closer to ignition conditions.

Although the fundamental physics behind radiation and matter flow is understood, many uncertainties remain in the exact behavior of macroscopic fluids in systems ranging from pure turbulence to coupled radiation hydrodynamics. Laboratory experiments play an important role in studying this physics to allow scientists to test their macroscopic models of these phenomena. However, because the fundamental physics is well understood, precision experiments are required to validate existing codes already tested by a suite of analytic, manufactured and convergence solutions. To conduct such high-precision experiments requires a detailed understanding of the experimental errors and the nature of their uncertainties on the observed diagnostics. In this paper, we study the uncertainties plaguing many radiation-flow experiments, focusing on those using a hohlraum (dynamic or laser-driven) source and a foam-density target. This study focuses on the effect these uncertainties have on the breakout time of the radiation front. We find that, even if the errors in the initial conditions and numerical methods are Gaussian, the errors in the breakout time are asymmetric, leading to a systematic bias in the observed data. We must understand these systematics to produce the high-precision experimental results needed to study this physics.

At National Ignition Facility (NIF), yield amplification due to alpha particle heating approached ~3 in the highest performing inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions, while yield amplification of ~15-30 is needed for ignition. Hydrodynamic instabilities are a major factor in degradation of implosions while understanding and mitigation of the instabilities are critical to achieving ignition. This article describes recent and planned hydrodynamic instability experiments with several focused platforms that have been developed to directly measure these instabilities in all phases of ICF implosions. Measurements of ripple-shock generation at OMEGA laser have indicated initial seeds for the instabilities in three ablators - plastic (CH), beryllium, and high-density carbon (HDC). Hydrodynamic Growth Radiography (HGR) platform was used to measure instability growth at the ablation front in the acceleration phase of implosions. This platform used pre-imposed 2-D perturbations for growth factor measurements at different perturbation wavelengths and was also used to measure growth of “native roughness” modulations, fill tubes, and capsule support membranes or “tents”. Also, in the acceleration phase several new experimental platforms have been or are being developed to measure instability growth at the ablator-ice interface. In the deceleration phase of implosions, “self-emission” and “self-backlighting” platforms were developed to measure perturbations near peak compression. This article reviews recent progress and results.

Radiation-hydrodynamics simulations are used to design laser-driven cylindrical implosion experiments to directly measure hydrodynamic instability growth in convergent geometry. Designs for two different size targets, varying in radial dimension by a factor of three, are presented. A set of beam pointings and powers are identified for each scale design that result in a nearly axially uniform implosion of an embedded marker layer. The implosion trajectories are shown to be scale-invariant between designs, with nearly identical scaled acceleration profiles. Linear theory and radiation-hydrodynamics simulations predict that Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth of an azimuthal perturbation, machined on the inner surface of the embedded marker, is also scale-invariant between designs.