Uniform fuel target implosion in heavy ion inertial fusion

Abstract

For a steady operation of a fusion power plant the target implosion should be robust against the implosion non-uniformities. In this paper the non-uniformity mitigation mechanisms in the heavy ion beam (HIB) illumination are discussed in heavy ion inertial fusion (HIF). A density valley appears in the energy absorber, and the large-scale density valley also works as a radiation energy confinement layer, which contributes to the radiation energy smoothing for the HIB illumination non-uniformity. The large density-gradient scale, which is typically ∼500μm in HIF targets, also contributes to a reduction of the Rayleigh- Taylor instability growth rate. In HIF a wobbling HIBs illumination would also reduce the Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth and to realize a uniform implosion.