A computational study of x-ray emission from high-Z x-ray sources on the National Ignition Facility laser

We have begun to use 350–500 kJ of 1/3-micron laser light from the National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser to create millimeter-scale, bright multi-keV x-ray sources. In the first set of shots we achieved 15%–18% x-ray conversion efficiency into Xe M-shell (∼1.5–2.5 keV), Ar K-shell (∼3 keV) and Xe L-shell (∼4–5.5 keV) emission (Fournier et al., Phys. Plasmas 17, 082701, 2010), in good agreement with the emission modeled using a 2D radiation-hydrodynamics code incorporating a modern Detailed Configuration Accounting atomic model in non-LTE (Colvin et al., Phys. Plasmas, 17, 073111, 2010). In this paper we first briefly review details of the computational model and comparisons of the simulations with the Ar/Xe NIF data. We then discuss a computational study showing sensitivity of the x-ray emission to various beam illumination details (beam configuration, pointing, peak power, pulse shape, etc.) and target parameters (size, initial density, etc.), and finally make some predictions of how the x-ray conversion efficiency expected from NIF shots scales with atomic number of the emitting plasma.