On the use of plasma foci as drivers for pellet implosions

Abstract

A simple model for the interaction between a solid microsphere and a surrounding dense and hot plasma shows that plasma columns such as those produced in plasma focus devices may drive the implosion of the microsphere, thus creating situations of interest for inertial confinement research. The method can be used for microspheres structured in such a way that the implosion does not require a critical temporal profile of the pressure pulse applied on the surface, i.e. for microspheres having thin shells. In this case, it is shown that the plasma column of a plasma focus fed by a condenser bank of a few hundred kilojoules is, potentially, a driver comparable to a multibeam kilojoule Nd laser facility. It is concluded that attention should be paid to plasma focus research in the context of inertial confinement.

An investigation of the plasma behaviour in a Filippov type plasma focus device

“…Due to this investigation, the f i and f m values cannot be chosen independently. (6) This study and the work in [23], show that the ML model is to a good extent capable of predicting the plasma behaviour in the Filippov type PF. This work also shows that besides the effects of the uncertainties in the f i and f m values, some of the model assumptions can also influence the accuracy of the results.…”

“…Due to the special characters of the PF devices, they may have diverse applications, e.g. they can be used in the field of high energy and high density physics [1][2][3][4][5], fusion studies [5,6], neutron and x-ray production [7,8], biological studies [9][10][11] and industrial applications [12][13][14][15]. The characteristics and features of the PF devices and the large number of their possible applications, particularly in medicine and industry, make these systems attractive for further investigations.…”

Design and Construction of a 20- KJ Filippov-Type Plasma Focus

“…These devices have been built with stored bank energy ranging from 1 kJ to 1 MJ with consequent variation in physical sizes of the device [5,6,7,8,9]. The plasma focus is well known as both a source of fusion neutrons and a source of x-rays [10,11,12,13]. Since 1965, a large range of investigations has been performed on both types.…”