Investigation of preheating of laser thermonuclear targets

The preheating level of the thermonuclear fuel and of the gas-compressing shell is the main criterion of the target-compression efficiency in experiments on laserdriven thermonuclear fusion. This paper contains the result of investigations of electronic, radiative, and impact preheating in experiments on compression and heating of hlgh-aspect shell targets in the Del'fin-l laser-derived thermonuclear facility. A procedure, based on analysis of the epithermal emission of the plasma, is considered for measuring the target preheating by fast electrons. The radiative and impact preheating of compressing shells in DD gas are estimated. The results of the investigation demonstrate the high degree of adiabaticity of the compression of the thermonuclear fuel in experiments with the Del'fin-l facility.Nuclear Plasma Laboratory of the Lebedev Physics Institute. Translated from Preprint No. 3, Lebedev Physics Institute, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow, 1990.