Magnetizing laser-driven inertial fusion implosions

Ingrid Fadelli is a writer for the website Phys.org.

Nuclear fusion is a process in which the nucleus of a low atomic number is fused together to make a heavier nucleus. Nuclear fusion reactions can be produced using a method called Insturment confinement fusion, which involves the use of powerful lasers to implode a fuel capsule.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Delaware, University of Rochester, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Imperial College London, and University of Rome La Sapienza have recently shown how a strong magnetic field can cause an implosion. The shape of fusion implosions can be flattened by strong magnetic fields.

One of the researchers who carried out the study said that the spherical capsule was imploded using high-power lasers for nuclear fusion. The B-field can be improved by applying a magnetic field to the implosion. The implosion shape can be affected by the direction of the magnetic field and the direction of the field lines.

Several physicists investigated the effects of fusion implosions over the past ten years. The majority of their studies were numerical and did not test hypotheses in an experimental setting.

Bose and his colleagues decided to conduct a series of tests to find out what happens to the shape of fusion implosions. Their experiments were designed to explore the properties of strong magnets. The ion and electron are both magnetized.

Bose said that the magnetization of the ion is very difficult to achieve and has not been studied at high power lasers. In order to conduct our tests, we used an extremely high 50T magnetic field, much higher than the ones used in previous experiments. The shape of the implosion was flattened by this field for the first time.

The Lab for Laser Energetics is located in Rochester, New York. They applied high B-fields to a millimeter-size spherical capsule, which was heated to over 100 million K using a laser-driven shock.

Bose said that the effects of the shock heating and applied B-field were important for the experiments. The oblate shape is caused by the suppression of heat flow in the strongly magnetized plasm.

Insturment implosions and the effects that magnetic fields can have on them are some of the new insights provided by this team of researchers. The method they outlined could be used by other teams to produce strongly magnetized electrons and ion in the future.

The implosion shape was flattened by the applied magnetic field. We plan to use the'recipe' outlined in our paper to conduct more experiments to investigate the effect of magnetization on transport properties.

More information: A. Bose et al, Effect of Strongly Magnetized Electrons and Ions on Heat Flow and Symmetry of Inertial Fusion Implosions, Physical Review Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.195002 Journal information: Physical Review Letters

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