Fast heating scalable to laser fusion ignition
Top Cited Papers
- 1 August 2002
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Nature in Nature
- Vol. 418 (6901) , 933-934
- https://doi.org/10.1038/418933a
Abstract
Rapid heating of a compressed fusion fuel by a short-duration laser pulse is a promising route to generating energy by nuclear fusion1, and has been demonstrated on an experimental scale using a novel fast-ignitor geometry2. Here we describe a refinement of this system in which a much more powerful, pulsed petawatt (1015 watts) laser creates a fast-heated core plasma that is scalable to full-scale ignition, significantly increasing the number of fusion events while still maintaining high heating efficiency at these substantially higher laser energies. Our findings bring us a step closer to realizing the production of relatively inexpensive, full-scale fast-ignition laser facilities.Keywords
This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:
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- Fast track to fusion energyNature, 2001
- Fast ignitor research at the Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka UniversityPhysics of Plasmas, 2001
- Experimental studies of the advanced fast ignitor schemePhysics of Plasmas, 2000
- Ignition and high gain with ultrapowerful lasers*Physics of Plasmas, 1994