Nuclear burning in a compact scheme of inertial electrostatic confinement as imitation of stellar nucleosynthesis. Experiment and PIC modeling

Oscillating Plasmas for Proton- Boron Fusion in Miniature Vacuum Discharge

“…In order to continue the studies of the IEC with reverse polarity, and relying on the PiC simulations using the electromagnetic code [36,37,41], over the past two decades we have been able to implement experimentally both DD synthesis [35,38,39,41,47] and aneutronic pB synthesis [20,48,49] in a miniature NVD with oscillatory confnement. Te OSCO, like the POPS scheme, has a very advantageous scaling of nuclear fusion power, and, together with a very small VC radius (r VC ∼ 0.1 cm, Figure 1) and deep PW (∼100 kV, Figure 2(a)), it provides high fusion power density in NVD [41,47].…”

“…An IEC scheme with reverse polarity [21] based on a miniature nanosecond vacuum discharge (NVD) [35][36][37], in which ion oscillations occur quite naturally [38], has a direct relation to this. Te NVD experiments and related PiC simulations began at the turn of the century, and over time, it became clear that some hopes associated with the potential advantages of nuclear fusion in the POPS scheme can be realized partially in a miniature NVD [38][39][40][41]. Te yield of DD neutrons was observed previously and studied in detail in this device [35][36][37][38][39][40][41], and an aneutronic proton-boron synthesis was demonstrated also recently [20].…”

“…Underline, in the experiments with NVD available today, the ions fight time of the entire anode space volume turns out to be less than the time needed for ion-ion relaxation under ions converging to the discharge center [40]. As a result, we do not have the microvolumes of thermonuclear plasma in NVD (such as those predicted earlier [21] in similar, but spherical geometry), while DD [35][36][37][38][39][40][41] and aneutronic pB synthesis [20] are observed certainly in the nonequilibrium plasmas (Figure 5) remaining nonignited on the discharge axis [36,49,52] (remark, the role of nanoparticles in the processes of X-ray generation and nuclear synthesis in NVD requires separate consideration, for example, [20,46,53,54]). At the same time, it should be noted that obtaining the desired type of ion distribution functions between two opposite limits like "beam-Maxwellian" ones [22] is a challenging but promising future task.…”

“…Te NVD experiments and related PiC simulations began at the turn of the century, and over time, it became clear that some hopes associated with the potential advantages of nuclear fusion in the POPS scheme can be realized partially in a miniature NVD [38][39][40][41]. Te yield of DD neutrons was observed previously and studied in detail in this device [35][36][37][38][39][40][41], and an aneutronic proton-boron synthesis was demonstrated also recently [20]. Interestingly, the feld of the virtual cathode confnes the oscillating ions in the NVD, and at the same time, the inertia of the oscillating ions partially holds the electrons of VC by electric felds.…”

“…Tis paper discusses and compares the features and capabilities of oscillating plasmas for nuclear fusion both in the POPS scheme [29,31,34] and the OSCO regime based on NVD [20,[35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. Te study of a fundamental issue for IEC devices with electron injection as neutralization of the spatial charge started for NVD recently [42] and is developing further.…”