The Role of Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion as a Pathway to Fusion Energy

Turbulent stagnation in a Z -pinch plasma

“…Introduction -In implosions of a cylindrical z-pinch plasma, hydrodynamic kinetic motion is ultimately transferred to thermal motion of plasma particles-electrons and ionsthrough a cascade of atomic and thermodynamic processes [1][2][3][4]. These processes culminate at the stagnation phase, producing high-energy-density plasmas and generating powerful x-ray and neutron radiation [5].…”

Inertial confinement fusion for energy: overview of the ongoing experimental, theoretical and numerical studies

“…The first two steps relax the implosion velocity, areal density and convergence requirements for ignition. The concept was very recently demonstrated on the 'Z' facility (coupling a pulsed-power accelerator producing a peak current of 19 MA-for 100 Mbar of drive pressure-to a multi-kJ laser beamlet) where the first integrated experiments allowed the recording of thermonuclear deuterium-deuterium (DD) yields in excess of 10 12 , only when laser pre-heating was applied [1,45,46] (figure 9, right). Future developments at the Sandia National Laboratory (SNL) to increase this yield include improvements of the magnetization B field from 10 to 30 T, of the preheating laser energy from 2.5 to at least 6 kJ and of the pinch current [47], but also improvements of the understanding of the underlying physics (especially during the second step) partly thanks to an experimental program conducted in collaboration with the LLE on the OMEGA laser facility [48].…”

Development Considerations for High-Repetition-Rate HEDP Experiments

“…turbulence) and rare or lowsignal events. A successful transition to high-repetitionrate HEDP experiments provides many new experimental modes which can be leveraged to answer many sorts of scientific questions and to prototype real-world applications requiring high-average-power [7][8][9][10][11]. Conducting these types of experiments will require the use of next-generation targetry, detector technology and data acquisition systems.…”