Demonstrating fusion ignition in the laboratory for the first time

School of Mathematics and Physics

The School of Maths &amp; Physics is delighted to welcome Dr Andrew MacPhee to the third of this series of Sir Harrie Massey's  Colloquia.

Larmor Lecture Theatre

Speaker: Dr. Andrew MacPhee, LLNL, Representing Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Inertial Confinement Fusion team at the National Ignition Facility.
 Title: Demonstrating fusion ignition in the laboratory for the first time 
 Abstract: In 1997 NAS defined ignition on the National Ignition Facility as more fusion energy out than laser energy delivered to the target. This is called target gain. At 9:03am GMT on 5th December 2022 on NIF target shot N221204, target gain of 1.5 was demonstrated, clearly meeting this bar and moving into a new and exciting regime for Inertial Confinement Fusion. Today we describe this result and some of the steps that went into achieving it.
 Speaker Bio: Andrew is a staff physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Since receiving his Ph.D. from The Queen’s University of Belfast in 1996, Andrew worked at the Advanced Photon Source in Chicago studying automotive injector sprays and at the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley studying ultrafast material dynamics. Andrew joined LLNL in 2006 developing x-ray diagnostics for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and studying hydrodynamic instabilities seeded by capsule nonuniformities and the fuel fill-tube, and more recently investigating techniques for measuring electron temperature in high-yield ICF implosions. Andrew was elected an APS fellow in 2018 and is a co-recipient of the 2022 John Dawson Award for achieving a burning DT plasma.
 Refreshments will be provided

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Demonstrating fusion ignition in the laboratory for the first time

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