Richard Boyd

From 4CS2009

Richard N. Boyd is the Science Director for the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.

His talk:

Creating a Star in the Laboratory: The National Ignition Facility

ABSTRACT

The National Ignition Facility, completed in 2009, is the world’s largest laser. As such it is expected to compress a pellet of ²H and ³H to achieve a temperature exceeding 100 million K and density of up to 1000 gcm ^{− 3}, both seven times their values at the core of the Sun. These should produce ignition and energy gain. NIF plans to encourage programs in basic research, with nuclear astrophysics being part of that program. This presentation will describe the basic operation of NIF, as well as the motivation for and some details of several nuclear astrophysics experiments that might be conducted at NIF. Finally I will discuss how NIF might impact the world’s energy future.

This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344, LLNL-ABS-416423