Inertial confinement fusion quarterly report, April--June 1994. Volume 4, Number 3

This issue of the ICF Quarterly contains six articles covering a wide range of activities within the Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) Program. It concentrates on target design; theoretical spectral analysis of ICF capsule surfaces; laser fusion experimental methods; and an alternative ICF design, based on ultrafast, ultrapowerful lasers. A key issue for the success of the ICF process is the hydrodynamic stability of the imploding capsule. There are two primary sources of instability growth in the ICF process: (1) asymmetries in the x-ray flux that drive the compression lead to asymmetric in the imploding surface; (2) imperfections on the capsule surface can grow into large perturbations, degrading the capsule performance. In recent years, a great deal of effort, both experimentally and theoretically, has been spent to enhance the Program`s ability to measure, model, and minimize instability growth during an implosion. Four the articles in this issue discuss this subject