Experimental investigation to demonstrate Impact Fast Ignition scheme

Abstract

We have proposed a new ignition scheme of Fast Ignition, called "Impact Fast Ignition (IFI)", in which a compressed fuel is ignited by impact collision of a fragment of separately imploded fuel. We performed integrated experiments on impact ignition, in which a portion of a deuterated polystyrene (CD) shell was accelerated to about 600 km/s and was collided with precompressed CD fuel. The shell was imploded using 9 beams and the impactor was accelerated using 3 beams of the GEKKO XII laser system. The laser energy was 350 J per beam. The kinetic energy of the impactor was efficiently converted into thermal energy generating a temperature of about 1.8 keV., Observed maximum neutron yield was 2×106. This yield was 80 times as large as that without impactor. We will present the experimental details and results, demonstrating the high potential of impact ignition for fusion energy production. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.