Operational window for light-ion-beam transport for LMF

Abstract

Summary form only given, as follows. The proposed Laboratory Microfusion Facility (LMF) will require /spl ges/10 MJ of 30 MeV lithium ions to be transported and focused onto high-gain, high-yield inertial confinement fusion (ICF) targets. The light-ion LMF approach uses a multimodular system with individual ion extraction diodes as beam sources. Several transport schemes are being considered to deliver the individual ion beams to the centrally located ICF target. Given a set of parameters associated with each of the transport schemes, constraints on transportable ion beam power are examined to define an operational window in parameter space. Beam-driven instabilities, plasma hydrodynamics, beam energy losses during transport, and beam transport efficiency are considered for each transport scheme. System parameters include time-of-flight bunching of the beams, diode radius, beam microdivergence, number of modules, background gas species and pressure, etc. Results will be presented for the baseline transport scheme, ballistic transport with solenoidal lens focusing. Preliminary results for other transport schemes will also be shown.