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The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research device, located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, United States. NIF's mission is to achieve fusion ignition with high energy gain. It achieved the first instance of scientific breakeven controlled fusion in an experiment on December 5, 2022, with an energy gain factor of 1.5. It supports nuclear weapon maintenance and design by studying the behavior of matter under the conditions found within nuclear explosions.
David Herbert Munro is a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) who created the programming language Yorick as well as the scientific graphics library Gist.
Edward Moses is an American physicist and is the former president of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization. He is a past principal associate director for the National Ignition Facility & Photon Science Directorate, where he led the California-based NIF, the largest experimental science facility in the US and the world's most energetic laser, that hopes to demonstrate the first feasible example of usable nuclear fusion.
Fusion ignition is the point at which a nuclear fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining. This occurs when the energy being given off by the reaction heats the fuel mass more rapidly than it cools. In other words, fusion ignition is the point at which the increasing self-heating of the nuclear fusion removes the need for external heating. This is quantified by the Lawson criterion. Ignition can also be defined by the fusion energy gain factor.
LASNEX is a computer program that simulates the interactions between x-rays and a plasma, along with many effects associated with these interactions. The program is used to predict the performance of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) devices such as the Nova laser or proposed particle beam "drivers". Versions of LASNEX have been used since the late 1960s or early 1970s, and the program has been constantly updated. LASNEX's existence was mentioned in John Nuckolls' seminal paper in Nature in 1972 that first widely introduced the ICF concept, saying it was "...like breaking an enemy code. It tells you how many divisions to bring to bear on a problem."
Omar Hurricane is a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in the thermonuclear and inertial confinement fusion design division. Hurricane completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) under the supervision of Professor René Pellat in 1994. He remained at UCLA as a postdoc under adviser Steven Cowley, studying the kink and nonlinear ballooning mode instability in high-beta plasmas until joining LLNL in 1998 as a designer in A-Division.
Michael Dennis Feit (1942–2023) was an American physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California.
Félicie Albert is a French and American physicist working on laser plasma accelerators. She is the deputy director for the Center for High Energy Density Science at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and staff scientist at the National Ignition Facility and Photon Science Directorate and the Joint High Energy Density Sciences organization.
John D. Lindl is an American physicist who specializes in inertial confinement fusion (ICF). He is currently the chief scientist of the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Kimberly Susan Budil is an American physicist who is the 13th and current director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, making her the first woman to hold this position. She completed her bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Illinois Chicago, and her master's and doctorate in applied science from the University of California, Davis. She collaborated with Nobel laureate Donna Strickland, and made significant contributions to the field of high-power, ultra-fast lasers. Starting her career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1987, she held various roles across government departments, including the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. In 2014, she managed relations between the University of California's campuses and the three Department of Energy labs it manages. Budil, who was made a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2019, has also been a prominent advocate for women in science.
Christine Anne Coverdale is an American plasma physicist at Sandia National Laboratories, where she is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff.
Christine Garban-Labaune is a French plasma physicist known for her research in inertial confinement fusion.
Tammy Ma is an American plasma physicist who works on inertial confinement fusion at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Sharon Gail Glendinning is an American experimental physicist.
Denise Hinkel is a plasma physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Stephanie Brooke Hansen is an American plasma physicist whose research applies both computational modeling and spectroscopy to inertial confinement fusion. She is a distinguished member of the technical staff in the inertial confinement fusion target design group at Sandia National Laboratories.
Carolyn C. Kuranz is an American plasma physicist whose research involves the use of high-powered lasers at the National Ignition Facility both to help develop inertial confinement fusion and to study how matter behaves in conditions similar to those in shock waves in astrophysics. She is an associate professor at the University of Michigan, in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences.
Andrea Lynn "Annie" Kritcher is an American nuclear engineer and physicist who works at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She was responsible for the development of Hybrid-E, a capsule that enables inertial confinement fusion. She was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2022.
Maria Gatu Johnson is a Swedish-American plasma physicist whose research involves the use of neutron spectrometry to study inertial confinement fusion and stellar nucleosynthesis. She works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a principal research scientist in the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
Debra Ann Callahan is an American physicist known for her work on the design of hohlraum targets for inertial confinement fusion. She is a former researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the target design lead at Focused Energy, a fusion power start-up company in the San Francisco Bay Area.
References
- 1 2 3 Seven Lab physicists elected APS fellows, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 22 November 2002, retrieved 2025-01-30
- ↑ APS Fellows archive, American Physical Society, retrieved 2025-01-30
- ↑ 2023 Director’s Science and Technology Awards, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, retrieved 2025-01-30
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