Beyond Radiation Hydrodynamics: A Coupled Kinetic Plasma and Radiation Modeling of NIF Polar Direct Drive Capsule
Abstract
Predictive modeling of inertial-confinement-fusion (ICF) implosions increasingly requires resolving ion-kinetic effects beyond the reach of radiation-hydrodynamics, without sacrificing radiation transport. We present, to our knowledge, the first coupling of a kinetic-ion plasma model to thermal radiation transport. The iFP code - a conservative, spherically symmetric, 1D2V hybrid kinetic-ion/fluid-electron Vlasov-Fokker-Planck solver - is extended with a grey P1 radiation model, coupled through a high-order/low-order (HOLO) fixed-point solver and advanced on a shared adaptive moving mesh. Opacities are mixed on the fly from the LANL TOPS library, exploiting the per-species information intrinsic to a kinetic code. We verify the implementation against the optically thick Marshak-wave and Mach-45 radiative-shock benchmarks, and apply it to a NIF polar-direct-drive exploding-pusher capsule. Increasing physics fidelity systematically improves agreement with the measured neutron yield and burn width; the improvement is driven by kinetically enhanced fuel leakage and ballistic preheating, and radiation transport proves essential for quantitative agreement. This work establishes a proof-of-principle capability for higher-fidelity kinetic-plasma/radiation modeling of ICF.
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BibTeX
@misc{hammer2026beyond,
title = {{Beyond Radiation Hydrodynamics: A Coupled Kinetic Plasma and Radiation Modeling of NIF Polar Direct Drive Capsule}},
author = {Hans R Hammer and William T Taitano and Steven E Anderson and Brett D Keenan and Luis Chacon and Andrei N Simakov},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.26537},
eprint = {2610.26537},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.26537},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Beyond Radiation Hydrodynamics: A Coupled Kinetic Plasma and Radiation Modeling of NIF Polar Direct Drive Capsule
AU - Hans R Hammer
AU - William T Taitano
AU - Steven E Anderson
AU - Brett D Keenan
AU - Luis Chacon
AU - Andrei N Simakov
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/19
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.26537
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.26537
AB - Predictive modeling of inertial-confinement-fusion (ICF) implosions increasingly requires resolving ion-kinetic effects beyond the reach of radiation-hydrodynamics, without sacrificing radiation transport. We present, to our knowledge, the first coupling of a kinetic-ion plasma model to thermal radiation transport. The iFP code - a conservative, spherically symmetric, 1D2V hybrid kinetic-ion/fluid-electron Vlasov-Fokker-Planck solver - is extended with a grey P1 radiation model, coupled through a high-order/low-order (HOLO) fixed-point solver and advanced on a shared adaptive moving mesh. Opacities are mixed on the fly from the LANL TOPS library, exploiting the per-species information intrinsic to a kinetic code. We verify the implementation against the optically thick Marshak-wave and Mach-45 radiative-shock benchmarks, and apply it to a NIF polar-direct-drive exploding-pusher capsule. Increasing physics fidelity systematically improves agreement with the measured neutron yield and burn width; the improvement is driven by kinetically enhanced fuel leakage and ballistic preheating, and radiation transport proves essential for quantitative agreement. This work establishes a proof-of-principle capability for higher-fidelity kinetic-plasma/radiation modeling of ICF.
ER -