Black-body radiation as an inertial confinement fusion driver

Abstract

To ignite a thermonuclear microexplosion a power source of ≳ 1014W is required with an energy of ≳106J focused down to ≲0.1 cm. To meet these driver requirements, charged particle beams1 and even hypervelocity projectiles2 have been proposed as an alternative to lasers for which an energy ≳106J is considered very large. Although charged particle beams and hypervelocity projectiles promise much larger energies the problem of the large driver power of ≳1014W remains. We propose here a two-stage driver concept which eliminates this problem. In it the initial energy is drawn from any of these drivers but is used here to generate an intense black-body radiation source. This black-body radiation is then used to drive the thermonuclear microexplosion target. This concept not only permits the initial driver power to be reduced by about two orders of magnitude from ≳1014W down to a few 1012W, but also greatly relaxes the beam-focusing requirements as compared with direct pellet fusion.