Design of an inertial fusion experiment exceeding the Lawson criterion for ignition
Name
22ja017_full.pdf
Size
3.18 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
9cf97a2f83b538e154fd11158acc813e
Author(s)
Kritcher, A.L.
Zylstra, A.B.
Callahan, D.A.
Hurricane, O.A.
Weber, C.R.
Clark, D.S.
Young, C.V
Ralph, J.E.
Casey, D.T.
Pak, A.
Date Issued
May 2022
Journal
Physical Review E
Publisher
APS
Abstract
We present the design of the first igniting fusion plasma in the laboratory by Lawson’s criterion that produced 1.37 MJ of fusion energy, Hybrid-E experiment N210808 (August 8, 2021) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 075001 (2022)]. This design uses the indirect drive inertial confinement fusion approach to heat and compress a central “hot spot” of deuterium-tritium (DT) fuel using a surrounding dense DT fuel piston. Ignition occurs when the heating from absorption of α particles created in the fusion process overcomes the loss mechanisms in the system for a duration of time. This letter describes key design changes which enabled a ∼3–6× increase in an ignition figure of merit (generalized Lawson criterion) [Phys. Plasmas 28, 022704 (2021), Phys. Plasmas 25, 122704 (2018)]) and an eightfold increase in fusion energy output compared to predecessor experiments. We present simulations of the hot-spot conditions for experiment N210808 that show fundamentally different behavior compared to predecessor experiments and simulated metrics that are consistent with N210808 reaching for the first time in the laboratory “ignition.”
Description
Submitted for publication in Physical Review E
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Plasma Science and Fusion Center
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
doi.org/10.1103/physreve.106.025201
https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.106.025201
