Hole Boring in a DT Pellet and Fast-Ion Ignition with Ultraintense Laser Pulses
- Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquee, ENSTA, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, 91761 Palaiseau (France)
- Helmholtzzentrum fuer Schwerionenforschung GmbH, Planckstrasse 1, D-64291 Darmstadt (Germany)
- Centre Lasers Intenses et Applications, Universite Bordeaux 1 - CEA - CNRS, 33405 Talence Cedex (France)
- Laboratoire pour l'Utilisation des Lasers Intenses, CNRS - CEA - Ecole Polytechnique - Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex (France)
- Space Physics Research Laboratory, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 (United States)
Recently achieved high intensities of short laser pulses open new prospects in their application to hole boring in inhomogeneous overdense plasmas and for ignition in precompressed DT fusion targets. A simple analytical model and numerical simulations demonstrate that pulses with intensities exceeding 10{sup 22} W/cm{sup 2} may penetrate deeply into the plasma as a result of efficient ponderomotive acceleration of ions in the forward direction. The penetration depth as big as hundreds of microns depends on the laser fluence, which has to exceed a few tens of GJ/cm{sup 2}. The fast ions, accelerated at the bottom of the channel with an efficiency of more than 20%, show a high directionality and may heat the precompressed target core to fusion conditions.
- OSTI ID:
- 21180118
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 102, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.025002; (c) 2009 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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