Effects of preheat and mix on the fuel adiabat of an imploding capsule

We demonstrate the effect of preheat, hydrodynamic mix and vorticity on the adiabat of the deuterium-tritium (DT) fuel in fusion capsule experiments. We show that the adiabat of the DT fuel increases resulting from hydrodynamic mixing due to the phenomenon of entropy of mixture. An upper limit of mix, Mclean/MDT ≥ 0.98, is found necessary to keep the DT fuel on a low adiabat. We demonstrate in this study that the use of a high adiabat for the DT fuel in theoretical analysis and with the aid of 1D code simulations could explain some aspects of 3D effects and mix in capsule implosion. Furthermore, we can infer from our physics model and the observed neutron images the adiabat of the DT fuel in the capsule and the amount of mix produced on the hot spot.

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