Dr. Aidan Crilly

Neutrons in ICF experiments provide key measurements during the burning phase. Modelling the transport of these neutrons requires detailed calculation of both the primary fusion reactions and the elastic and inelastic neutron scattering kinematics. I have developed many analytic and numerical tools to solve neutron transport problems relating to diagnosing plasma conditions. An example given here is a neutron spectrum as calculated by my 1D discrete ordinates code Minotaur:

X-ray imaging and spectroscopy are common methods employed in diagnosing HEDP and ICF experiments. Calculation of the radiative properties over the wide range of plasma properties in the experiment and solving the transport through the plasma present a difficult task. I work on developing the fast DCA atomic physics code SpK to include dense plasma effects such as ionisation potential depression. I also use this code to post-process large (∼10⁶ cells) hydrodynamic simulations to obtain synthetic measurements. An example of the time-integrated unfiltered X-ray image from a simulation of an imploded Al wire array on MAGPIE is shown below: