Diffusive tunneling of Gamow fuel ions in a mixture of fusion fuel and inert pusher

Abstract

Hydrodynamic mix produces small features for inter-mixed deuterium-tritium fuel and inert pusher materials. The dynamical reduction of size for the fuel cells that are segmented by pusher layers lead to greater local Knudsen numbers, which tend to aggravate the Knudsen layer fusion reactivity reduction. While the increasing yield reduction with increasing Knudsen number of the fuel region is straightforwardly anticipated, we show that once the pusher materials is stretched sufficiently thin by hydrodynamic mix, the fast fuel ions diffusively tunnel through them with minimal energy loss, so the Knudsen layer yield reduction becomes alleviated. This yield recovery can occur in a chunk-mixed plasma, significantly before the far more stringent, asymptotic limit of an atomically homogenized fuel and pusher assembly.