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Studying Nuclear Astrophysics at NIF (Physics Today)
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Richard N. Boyd (NIF/LLNL), Lee Bernstein (LLNL), and Carl Brune (Ohio University) present their thoughts on the extreme conditions that will be produced at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in order to closely study fusion energy. These conditions are intended to simulate those in nuclear weapons and inside stars.
The NIF facility is thus an important part of the US Department of Energy’s Stockpile Stewardship Program, designed to assess the nation’s aging nuclear stockpile without doing nuclear tests. In this Quick Study we consider a third application of NIF—using the extraordinary conditions it will produce to perform experiments in basic science. We will focus on measurements of some of the nuclear reaction probabilities that are important to nuclear astrophysics, the field that relates energy production and nucleosynthesis from nuclear reactions in stars and in the Big Bang to the environments in which those nuclear reactions occur. NIF, unlike previous nuclear physics facilities, will enable measurements of nuclear reactions at temperatures, densities, and ionization states similar to those that occur in stars.
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