Abstract
Recent developments in high power lasers have allowed the study of new regimes of laser-matter interactions relevant to astrophysics1, nuclear physics2, and fusion energy research3,4. In the context of inertial fusion energy research, the ‘fast ignitor’ (FI) concept5 was proposed in order to relax the strict symmetry requirements for the laser irradiation of the spherical target and to reduce the drive energy needed to achieve high densities and the formation of the spark. However, other problems have gradually become clear with this scheme. These are relevant to the temporal and spatial stability of the propagation of the additional heating source, for example the high-energy electron beam, due to losses and deflection6 of the ultra-intense laser pulse in the surrounding plasma and the transport through a considerable length of a plasma7. Here we describe a new compression geometry that eliminates these problems utilizing the cone-guided compression scheme8, or the so-called ‘advanced fast ignitor’9. The attraction of this scheme is that it makes easy to access to fuel core without the temporal and spatial uncertainty. Using this scheme, colleagues from Japan and UK reported the first experimental results of fast heating of the compressed super-solid density matter using an ultra-intense short pulse laser and showed that efficient compression and heating are both possible simultaneously. This new approach provides a route to efficient fusion energy production.
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© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Habara, H. et al. (2002). Advanced Concepts in Fast Ignition and the Relevant Diagnostics. In: Stott, P.E., Wootton, A., Gorini, G., Sindoni, E., Batani, D. (eds) Advanced Diagnostics for Magnetic and Inertial Fusion. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8696-2_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8696-2_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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