Proton-boron fusion in a compact scheme of plasma oscillatory confinement

Oscillating Plasmas for Proton- Boron Fusion in Miniature Vacuum Discharge

“…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.…”

“…Just subsequent 2D PiC modeling of the processes leading to DD synthesis in NVD [36], based on the full electrodynamic code KARAT [45] revealed the fundamental role of the formation of a virtual cathode (VC) and its corresponding deep potential well (PW) [37,38], which accelerates and confnes deuterons. In fact, the OSCO is based on an IEC scheme with reverse polarity [20,21,36,37] and makes it possible to operate in a vacuum, where beams of autoelectrons from the cathode will be formed when the high voltage is applied. Te auto-electrons, interacting with the deuterium-loaded Pd anode tubes, at frst, will create erosive plasma [38,46] near the anode with deuterons and deuteriumcontaining clusters.…”

“…therein). At the same time, another approach like plasma confnement under extreme conditions in a single device for pB fusion without any external infuences is also still of great interest [20]. Overall, the inertial electrostatic confnement (IEC) [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] is one of the very few in which ions can quite easily reach the energies required for the beginning of the pB reaction.…”

“…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. So we have called this type of confnement an electrodynamic or oscillatory one (OSCO) [20,41].…”

“…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.…”