Speaker
Guoli Ren
Description
See the full Abstract at http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2018ABS/pdf/P1.2028.pdf
Spherically convergent plasma fusion neutron generation by laser drive
Guoli Ren1, Jie Liu1, Ji Yan2, Ke Lan 1
1
Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, Beijing, China
2
Laser Fusion Research Centre, Mianyang, China
We propose a feasible scheme to acquire high ion temperature and high thermal nuclear
fusion neutron yield with laser ablated spherical convergent plasmas fusion (SCPF). In our
scheme, we use intense lasers (1014-1015 W/cm2) pulse of nanosecond duration to irradiate
thermonuclear fuel (such as Carbonized Deuterium, CD) containing layer (~10 microns)
lined inside a spherical hohlraum, the fuel layer is ablated and then expands at high speed
(~500 km/s) towards the sphere center. The hot fuel plasma eventually merge at the center
and convert most of their kinetic energy to the ion internal energy, raising the ion temperature
to a high level of around 10 keV. We have done demonstration experiment on
SGIII-prototype and SGII-upgrade facility. In the experiments, we use 6-12 kJ
triple-frequency laser to irradiate a CD layer lined inside a 1.7~2.0 mm diameter spherical
hohlraum with one laser entrance hole at each end, we have acquired a stable DD
thermonuclear fusion neutron yield of 3-5×109 . The process is robust and neutron yield is
insensitive to practical experimental environment and parameter fluctuation. The neutron
ToF data shows that the ion temperature of the merged plasmas is around 7 keV-8 keV. The
experiment results agree with our theoretical scaling law and hydrodynamic simulation. The
experiment has demonstrated that the SCPF scheme can potentially be a high-flux laser
fusion neutron generator in future. Improvement and further optimization of this scheme is
undergoing.
[1] G. Ren, J. Yan, J. Liu, K. Lan, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 165001(2017)
