Uranium hohlraum with an ultrathin uranium–nitride coating layer for low hard x-ray emission and high radiation temperature

Abstract

An ultrathin layer of uranium nitrides (UN) has been coated on the inner surface of depleted uranium hohlraum (DUH), which has been proven by our experiment to prevent the oxidization of uranium (U) effectively. Comparative experiments between the novel depleted uranium hohlraum and pure golden (Au) hohlraum are implemented on an SGIII-prototype laser facility. Under a laser intensity of 6 × 10 ^14 W cm ^−2 , we observe that the hard x-ray ( hν $\;\gt \;1.8$ keV) fraction of the uranium hohlraum decreases by 61% and the peak intensity of the total x-ray flux (0.1 keV∼5.0 keV) increases by 5%. Radiation hydrodynamic code LARED is used to interpret the above observations. Our result for the first time indicates the advantages of the UN-coated DUH in generating a uniform x-ray source with a quasi-Planckian spectrum, which should have important applications in high energy density physics.

Keywords

• uranium hohlraum
• oxidization
• uranium nitride
• hard x-ray emission