Implosion simulation by hydro code coupled with laser absorption using new raytrace algorithm

The calculation of the laser absorption is very important for implosion simulations to capture precisely its dynamics. In many implosion simulations, the laser absorption is computed by the use of ray tracing. However, the conventional ray tracing method has the problem that it generates a non-physical absorption distribution because it represents a laser beam by a finite number of rays. Such a non-physical distribution on the target surface could be numerical perturbations that grow drastically due to Rayleigh-Taylor instability. An enormous number of rays are required to avoid such a non-physical distribution. This results in high computational costs. Thus, we have developed a new method of ray tracing that essentially generates no non-physical absorption distribution. In the new algorithm, rays are inversely traced from grid points unlike the conventional method. This paper presents the new algorithm and a preliminary implosion simulation where the pressure perturbation due to the non-uniformity of the irradiation is computed by the use of this new ray tracing. (author)