Heat transport in laser-produced hot magnetized plasmas – HeapHop

How do magnetic fields, either spontaneous or induced, affect the behavior of high energy-density plasmas? How can they be utilized to improve the prospects for inertial fusion energy, and the understanding, through scaled experiments, of observable astrophysical phenomena such as stellar flares, accretion disks, supernova remnants, gamma-ray bursts, pulsar wind nebulae? This project is devoted to the detailed experimental characterization – at middle scale laser and XFEL facilities, with parallel efforts in kinetic, MHD and atomic physics modeling – of plasma processes underlying magneto-inertial fusion for energy (magneto-IFE) and astrophysics. Covering a broad range of magnetization levels, we will heap precious data on the anisotropic heat transport in magnetized plasmas either in the local and nonlocal regimes and on the B-field advection and diffusion entangled in this extended-MHD configuration. To this goal, we build upon our novel laser-based platforms capable of generating high energy-density plasmas embedded in strong magnetic fields, by means of either intense laser-induced discharges in coil targets (>100 T, few ns, mm3) or capacitor-bank driven electric pulsed discharges in solenoids (>30 T, 100 µs, cm3), along with our state-of-the-art kinetic, MHD, atomic physics, molecular dynamics and radiation transport simulation tools. The ultimate goal is to provide a robust experimental guidance and benchmark models and simulations used for dimensioning the future larger-scale magneto-IFE and laboratory astrophysics experiments at OMEGA, LMJ or NIF.