Plasma Generation and Heating to Thermonuclear Temperature by Lasers

Abstract

As lasers have ability to deliver a large amount of energy very rapidly to matters, one can produce thermonuclear temperature plasma. We observed that neutron yield from a solid deuterium target irradiated by the beam of glass laser, the power of which was 20 GW at 2 ns. The estimated threshold of laser power for anomalous heating due to parametric instability was accord with the experimental result. Beyond this threshold, the increase of the electron temperature; the appearance of a fast ion group and the anomality of the light reflection from plasma were discovered. These phenomena were closely correlated with the neutron yield. At the high temperature region above a few hundred electron volts, this kind of anomalous heating has an essential role to reach the fusion reaction temperature.