The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The story of fast ignition and a path forward

Recently the “fast ignition” method in the ICF problem was considered (Caruso & Pais, 1996). It allows increasing a target gain factor and raising reliability of the burning process. Since the required power of the irradiating beam in this method is unattainable for the traditional type of heavy ion driver with the energy of ions ≤10 GeV, the powerful laser is considered as a possible driver only. Here we investigate the fast ignition method for a system constituted from the directly irradiated cylindrical target and a powerful heavy ion driver of the charge-symmetric type (Koshkarev, 1993) in which the ions with energy ≈100 GeV and mass ≈200 are used. The actual design of a powerful heavy ion driver with the required characteristics is outside the purpose of this article. However some consideration will be given to exploring whether such a performance is within the realm of reasonable extrapolations of the present state of the art.

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A simulation study of fast ignition with ultrahigh intensity lasers

Physics of Plasmas ◽

10.1063/1.3124788 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 16 (5) ◽

pp. 056311 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

J. Tonge ◽

J. May ◽

W. B. Mori ◽

F. Fiuza ◽

S. F. Martins ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Simulation Study ◽

Fast Ignition

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Mutual colliding impact fast ignition

Physics of Plasmas ◽

10.1063/1.4895849 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 21 (9) ◽

pp. 092708 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Friedwardt Winterberg

Keyword(s):

Fast Ignition

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Studies on laser-driven generation of fast high-density plasma blocks for fast ignition

Laser and Particle Beams ◽

10.1017/s0263034606060368 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 249-254 ◽

Cited By ~ 28

Author(s):

J. BADZIAK ◽

S. GŁOWACZ ◽

H. HORA ◽

S. JABŁOŃSKI ◽

J. WOŁOWSKI

Keyword(s):

Proton Beam ◽

Laser Energy ◽

Skin Layer ◽

Fast Ignition ◽

High Density ◽

Proton Density ◽

Fast Ignitor ◽

Ignition Threshold ◽

Density Plasma

The properties of plasma (proton) block driven by the laser-induced skin-layer ponderomotive acceleration (S-LPA) mechanism are discussed. It is shown that the proton density of the plasma block is about a thousand times higher than that of the proton beam produced by the target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) mechanism. Such a high-density plasma (proton) block can be considered as a fast ignitor of fusion targets. The estimates show that using the S-LPA driven plasma block, the ignition threshold for precompressed DT fuel can be reached at the ps laser energy ≤ 100 kJ.

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