Plasma Liner with an Intermediate Heavy Shell and Thermal Pressure Drive

One of the challenging problems of magnetized target fusion (MTF) is developing ways to transport energy to the target situated at a distance far enough from the energy source so as to prevent damage to the permanent parts of the source. Several schemes were considered in the past, including the use of particle beams coupled with the inverse diode, mechanical projectiles in combination with magnetocompressional generators, and the plasma liner. In this paper, a possible modification of the original concept of the plasma liner (by Thio et al.) is described. The modification consists of creating a thin, higher-density shell made of a high-Z plasma and accelerating it onto an MTF target by the thermal pressure of hydrogen plasma with a temperature of ~10 eV. We discuss constraints on the parameters of this system and evaluate the convergence ratio that can be expected.