Predicting fusion ignition at the National Ignition Facility with physics-informed deep learning
- Brian K. Spears
- Scott Brandon
- Dan T. Casey
- John E. Field
- Jim A. Gaffney
- Kelli D. Humbird
- Andrea L. Kritcher
- Michael K. G. Kruse
- Eugene Kur
- Bogdan Kustowski
- S. Langer
- Dave Munro
- Ryan Nora
- J. Luc Peterson
- Dave J. Schlossberg
- Paul Springer
- Alex Zylstra
2025-08-14
An inertial confinement fusion experiment, carried out at the National Ignition Facility, has achieved ignition by generating fusion energy exceeding the laser energy that drove the experiment. Prior to the experiment, a generative machine learning model that combines radiation hydrodynamics simulations, deep learning, experimental data, and Bayesian statistics was used to predict, with a probability greater than 70%, that ignition was the most likely outcome for this shot.