Electron beam fusion targets
Abstract
The behavior of the Deuterium-Tritium filled gold shells when irradiated by a variety of pulse shapes was studied. In these pulses the power (and beam current) was varied, but the voltage was kept constant at 1 MeV. In general the performance of the target, for a given peak power, was not significantly affected by the pulse shape. Pulses with rise times of up to half the implosion time do not significantly degrade the target performance. The use of the 'optimal pulse' of laser fusion with a fixed peak power does not appear to improve the performance of these targets. The main function of the 'optimal pulse' is to produce a large rho r of the target during the thermonuclear burn. In e-beam targets a total rho r of 5 to 10 g/sq cm can be obtained without pulse shaping; the problem here is one of achieving high enough temperatures to ignite the Deuterium-Tritium
- Publication:
-
Presented at IEEE Intern. Conf. on Plasma Sci
- Pub Date:
- 1975
- Bibcode:
- 1975plsc.confR....C
- Keywords:
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- Electron Beams;
- Ignition;
- Laser Fusion;
- Nuclear Fuels;
- Targets;
- Deuterium;
- Gold;
- Irradiation;
- Laser Applications;
- Metal Shells;
- Rho-Mesons;
- Thermonuclear Reactions;
- Tritium;
- Lasers and Masers