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For Users: Science at the
National Ignition Facility

The National Ignition Facility (NIF), certified complete on March 30, 2009, will provide the scientific community with an unprecedented capability for studying materials at extreme pressures, temperatures and densities. NIF is expected to achieve temperatures and densities almost an order of magnitude greater than those in the sun's core and pressures far in excess of those at the core of Jupiter. The density of neutrons during the tens of picoseconds the NIF target undergoes ignition is expected to be 1033 per cubic centimeter.

NIF experiments will allow the study of physical processes at temperatures approaching 100 million kelvins, radiation temperatures of more than 3.5 million kelvins, densities greater than 1,000 g/cm3 and pressures of more than 100 billion atmospheres (see Science at the Extremes). These conditions have never been created in a laboratory environment and exist naturally only during thermonuclear burn, in supernovae and in the fusion reactions that power our stars.

Further information on scientific opportunities at NIF is contained in a November 2011 report summarizing the results of a joint National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Office of Science workshop on Basic Research Directions for User Science at the National Ignition Facility.

NIF Control Room

The National Ignition Campaign (NIC) is a national effort aimed at demonstrating ignition at NIF, developing a reliable and routine capability for ignition applications experiments, and transitioning NIF from project completion to routine operation as a national user facility. NIC will run through Fiscal Year 2012. This period will be used to develop and implement the full spectrum of processes and protocols necessary to support a broad national and international users' program and to ensure that NIF is fully operational as a user facility.

Users of NIF will include researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's national laboratories, international fusion energy researchers, scientists from academia and other national and international users. A broad external user community is an important element of NIF operations. We at NIF invite interested researchers and scientists to integrate NIF's experimental capabilities into their research programs and to actively engage on the science use of NIF.

Scientists planning NIF experiments may also wish to consider preparatory experiments at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Jupiter Laser Facility and other laser facilities across the National Nuclear Security Administration complex. The combination of NIF and Jupiter represents the most sophisticated, energetic and diverse set of high-energy-density science research tools in the world available at one site.

To enhance communication and exploration of these scientific opportunities, a NIF User Group has been formed. Professor Justin Wark of the University of Oxford serves as the interim leader of this User Group.

We encourage interested researchers to join the NIF User Group and contact NIF staff or Professor Wark to discuss their research interests further. The next meeting of the User Group will be held Sunday, February 12th, 2012 through Wednesday, February 15th, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

NIF will provide extraordinary opportunities for breakthrough experiments in a variety of fields. We look forward to building a strong NIF science user community and the opportunity to explore the frontiers of science on NIF.

Christopher Keane

For further information on scientific opportunities at the NIF, please contact:

Dr. Christopher J. Keane, LLNL

PHONE: (925) 422-2179
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