A close coupled, distributed radiator heavy ion target is presented. Close coupled refersto a decrease in the distance between the hohlraum wall and the inertial confinement fusion capsule.In two dimensional, integrated, LASNEX calculations, this target produced 436 MJ of yield from3.27 MJ of ion beam energy for a gain of 133. To achieve these results, the hohlraum dimensionswere reduced by 27% from the previous distributed radiator, heavy ion target while drivingthe same capsule. This reduced the beam energy required from 5.9 to 3.27 MJ. Calculations ofsingle mode Rayleigh-Taylor growth for this capsule show that this capsule is more stablethan at least one of the NIF target designs (the PT design which uses a CH ablator doped with oxygen and bromine). This means that issues regarding the Rayleigh-Taylor instability for theheavy ion driven capsule can be settled on NIF. This close coupled target can also be scaleddown in size for an Engineering Test Facility; LASNEX calculations predict that a gain of 94 canbe achieved from 1.75 MJ of beam energy. In addition, gain curves for distributed radiator targetswith the `conventional' case to capsule ratio and the close coupled case to capsule ratio are presented.
A 6 MJ spherical hohlraum target for heavy ion inertial fusion