Opacity on NIF: Anchor 2 Iron (Level 2 Milestone 7118 Report)
In FY2020 we fulfilled the exit criteria of milestone 7118. We fielded iron opacity experiments at higher densities and temperatures approaching anchor 2 conditions and made good progress on overcoming the problems that we found. This report describes in detail the progress that has been made. We presented the results in a LANL seminar on August 10 and we gave two talks on our results to the National Opacity Workshop Series, one on July 9 and the other on September 14. Before discussing the anchor 2 measurements, we present an update of the NIF anchor 1 data. We did a new analysis of the anchor 1 data and compared the results to a series of calculations using the LANL ATOMIC code. Figures 1 and 2 compare the data with the best-fit to calculations. This result is significantly improved over the result published in Atoms. The differences are small for the iron quasi-continuum between 8-9.5 Å and for the Mg Heα and Lyα lines. The opacities near the centers of the iron bound-bound features also match fairly well in the 9.5-12.5 Å range. However, the opacity windows between the large iron bound-bound features are deeper in the Atomic predictions than the measurement. Furthermore, large discrepancies exist for the Mg He β, γ, and δ lines and for the short-wavelength quasicontinuum. The experiment and analysis refinements described below have set the stage for unraveling these discrepancies. Specifically, we can repeat the Anchor 1 experiments using improved backlighter, hohlraum, and spectrometers to obtain reduced backgrounds and better spectral resolution. Exploiting the AlMg calibration experiments and repeating the Anchor 1 measurements multiple times will enable formal and rigorous uncertainty determination. This well-defined path gives us confidence that high quality opacity data can be obtained on NIF.