Progress in Inertial Confinement Fusion in the United States

Significant progress has been made in the United States Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) Program since the previous IFSA conferences in Bourdeaux (1999) and Kyoto (2001). This progress has covered all areas of ICF from target design to implosion experiments. It is capped by experimental results from cryogenic direct-drive targets on OMEGA and new results from the first quad of the National Ignition Facility. This paper will briefly highlight some of the myriad of new results that give confidence in the achievement of ignition on the National Ignition Facility