Abstract: This talk will describe research investigating high energy density plasmas at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). LLNL’s  primary mission is to strengthen U.S. security through the development and application of world-class science and technology to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of America’s nuclear stockpile.  The National Ignition facility (NIF), funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), is a premier international center for experimental science that supports fundamental and applied-science underpinning this core mission.

NIF’s powerful laser beams create temperatures and pressures similar to those that exist in the cores of stars and giant planets and inside weapons. These conditions enable hundreds of one-of-a-kind experiments that help ensure the nation’s security through stockpile stewardship. This talk will describe the NIF facility and then outline recent important advances that lead to the production of 1.3 MJ of fusion yield in the laboratory using laser driven implosions [see for example D. Callahan Bull. American Physical Society November 2021]. The talk will highlight the important role played by diagnostics that helped to enable this milestone result.

Work performed under the auspices of the U. S. DoE by LLNL under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344