The worldwide interest in Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) has increased significantly since the first laboratory demonstration of ignition and burn at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Both public research institutions and private companies now substantially invest into research and technology development for IFE. The German government has recently initiated the ambitious funding program “Fusion 2040”, which includes the goal to establish German hubs for IFE research and development as soon as possible. The HED-HIBEF activities at European XFEL would be a natural basis for such a hub, e.g., by installing a new dedicated IFE-Research Instrument (IFE-RI) at this facility and building on its international community.
This workshop aims to discuss the general role of XFELs towards an IFE power plant and identify both IFE-relevant activities that can be pursued at the existing HED-HIBEF instrument and flagship experiments with a future IFE-RI, ideally providing multi-kJ, multi-beam long pulse and short pulse drive lasers. The topics to be discussed include:
- XFEL-based diagnostics of IFE target physics: ablator & fuel EOS, microphysics and transport properties, hydro instabilities, intense laser-matter interaction for shock and fast ignition, etc.
- Microscopic x-ray imaging and diffraction of dynamic radiation damage cascades of fusion reactor walls in strong radiation environments including the lifetime assessment of plasma-facing materials.
- XFEL-based diagnostics of IFE plasmas compatible with sub-scale and full-scale IFE facilities (i.e., with high repetition rate and extreme radiation environments).
- Laser technology required for IFE-RI.
- Theory & simulation developments required to support an IFE program at EuXFEL.
- Setting up a new partner consortium for IFE research at European XFEL.
We invite both the IFE community and the broader HED community around EuXFEL to convene for this workshop at the EuXFEL headquarters in Schenefeld, Germany on June 11-12, which will run in a hybrid format (attendance both onsite and via Zoom possible).
