Assisted-pinched transport of heavy-ion beams in a fusion chamber

Abstract

In heavy-ion inertial confinement fusion, ion beams are transported several meters through the reactor chamber to the target. This standoff distance mitigates damage to the final focus magnets and chamber walls from the target explosion. A promising transport scheme makes use of a preformed discharge channel to confine and guide the beams. In this assisted-pinched transport scheme, many individual beams are merged into two high-current beams for two-sided illumination of the fusion target. The beams are combined and focused outside the chamber before propagating at small radius in the discharge channel to the target. A large beam divergence can be contained by the strong magnetic field resulting from the roughly 50-kA discharge current. Using a hybrid particle-in-cell simulation code, we examine the dynamics of heavy-ion inertial confinement fusion driver-scale beams in this transport mode. Results from detailed two-dimensional simulations of assisted-pinched transport in roughly 1-Torr Xe suggest that the Xe plasma becomes sufficiently conductive to limit self-field effects and achieve good transport efficiency. Coupling to a published target design is calculated. In addition, results from a semianalytic theory for resistive hose growth are presented that explain three-dimensional simulation results.