Heavy-Ion-Driven Targets for Small-Scale Inertial Confinement Fusion Experiments

Two regimes of hydrodynamic evolution are found in the analysis of the performance of small-scale heavy-ion-driven targets. One leads to high density and high compression with moderate temperatures (∼1 keV) for driving energies of 100 kJ for 0.1-mg deuterium-tritium targets. Ignition can then be triggered by a second ion pulse (∼50 kJ). Breakeven could be obtained if a burnup fraction as small as 1% is obtained. The second regime leads to very high temperatures in the central part of the fuel, while the rest of the fuel remains at moderate temperatures (<1 keV), and the density is very low everywhere. Propagated ignition cannot occur in this case because of the small optical thickness of the compressed fuel (<0.1 g/cm²).