Advances in mapping of x-ray emission from NIF hohlraums

A newly available ns-gated laser-entrance-hole (GLEH) imager in the National Ignition Facility provides a routine, non-perturbative measurement of hohlraum x-ray emission from inner and outer laser beam deposition regions. The GLEH records the x-ray flux integrated over complex interactions of various part of hohlraum plasma that evolves on a sub-nanosecond time scale. To use these images to unravel hohlraum physics, the first step is to pinpoint the origin inside the hohlraum of the observed x-ray image features. By mapping the hohlraum emission to the GLEH images using high-resolution simulations, one can interpret the GLEH images and gain insight into the hohlraum dynamics.