Collective alpha particle stopping for reduction of the threshold for laser fusion using nonlinear force driven plasma blocks

Abstract

The anomaly at laser plasma interaction at laser pulses of TW to PW power and ps duration led to a very unique generation of quasi-neutral plasma blocks by a skin layer interaction avoiding the relativistic self-focusing. This is in contrast to numerous usual experiments. The plasma blocks have ion current densities above 10 11 A/cm 2 and may be used for a fast ignition scheme with comparably low compression of the deuterium tritium (DT) fuel. The difficulty is that a very high energy flux density E* of the ions is necessary according to the hydrodynamic theory (Bobin, 1971(Bobin, , 1974Chu, 1972). This theory did not include the later discovered collective effect for the stopping power of the alpha particles. One problem is being discussed, whether the Bethe-Bloch binary collision theory or the collective collision theory of Gabor has to be applied. The inclusion of the collective effect results in a reduction of the threshold value of E* for ignition by a factor of about fife.

Laser fusion energy from p-7Li with minimized radioactivity

“…where again the necessary value of E * is within the range of 10 times higher difficulties than for DT that was estimated to be reached with few dozens of PW-ps laser pulses very close to the case of p-11 B (Hora et al, 2007;Hora, 2009;Eisenbarth et al, 2007;Malekynia et al, 2009;Eliezer et al, 1989). As in the case of DT of Chu (1972), for higher energy flux densities E than E * , the plots are further increasing on time T as an expression of ignition.…”

“…As in the case of DT of Chu (1972), for higher energy flux densities E than E * , the plots are further increasing on time T as an expression of ignition. One modification may be due to the fact that the ignition temperatures for all the considered fuel are above the energy loss by bremsstrahlung as known since the computations by Chu for DT and as it was repeatedly confirmed in the present treatments (Chu, 1972;Hora, 2009;Malekynia et al, 2009). This does not depend on minor modifications and corrections from further studies of numerous details to be gained in further studies.…”

“…Another question was the use of the p-11 B fusion reaction producing three alpha particles only of equal energy (2.888 MeV). The side on ignition with nonlinear force driven plasma blocks (Hora et al, 2002(Hora et al, , 2007 arrived at a very different result (Eisenbarth et al, 2007;Malekynia et al, 2009;Eliezer et al, 1989). In contrast to a spherical laser driven ignition of p-11 B needing a compression to 100.000 times, the solid state and low efficiencies excluding any use.…”

Threshold for laser driven block ignition for fusion energy from hydrogen boron-11

“…It was concluded by Eliezer et al (2007) "that the desired clean fusion reaction p þ B(11) ! Apart from clarification of more details of this analysis (Malekynia et al, 2009, Fig. Apart from clarification of more details of this analysis (Malekynia et al, 2009, Fig.…”

Ion jet generation in the ultraintense laser interactions with rear-side concave target

“…The advent of ultrashort ultraintense laser pulses led to the development of new exciting fields in laser plasma interaction (Karsch et al, 1999;Malka et al, 2004;Roth et al, 2005;Mangles et al, 2006;Kawata et al, 2005;Yu et al, 2005;Glowacz et al, 2006;Koyama et al, 2006;Lifshitz et al, 2006;Sakai et al, 2006;Yu et al, 2007;Hora, 2007;Dromey et al, 2009;Fazio et al, 2009;Hoffmann 2008aHoffmann , 2008bKasperczuk et al, 2009aKasperczuk et al, , 2009bLaska et al, 2007;Limpouch et al, 2008;Malekynia et al, 2009;Sharma & Sharma 2009;Izgorodin et al, 2009;Li et al, 2009;Sadighi-Bonabi et al, 2009;Hong et al, 2009;Kline et al, 2009). The generation of energetic ion beams from laser plasma interaction is an exciting area of research with important applications ranging from medical proton therapy (Bulanov & Khoroshkov, 2002), high-energydensity physics (Patel et al, 2003), to fast ignition in inertial confinement fusion .…”