The National Ignition Facility and the Ignition Campaign

Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is one of the two major approaches to achieving controlled fusion in the laboratory. In the ICF approach, a small (~ 1 mm radius) sphere containing the deuterium-tritium fuel is compressed using either laser light or xrays to reach the density and temperatures needed for fusion to occur. We are conducting experiments toward achieving ICF ignition on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser – a 192 beam, 500 TW, 1.8 MJ laser. Experiments on the NIF laser began in summer of 2009. In this talk, I will discuss the experimental techniques and results on the path to ignition.