Directed Energy HPM, PP, & PPS Efforts: Magnetized Target Fusion - Field Reversed Configuration

摘要

This effort continued MTF-FRC experimental work at Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL's) FRX-L (Field Reversed eXperiment -- Liner) facility and the start-up of a parallel experimental effort for forming and translation Field Reversed Configurations (FRCs) at AFRL's Building 322 on Kirtland Air Force Base. This effort also included developing an improved Crowbar switch to reduce modulation of the main discharge used to form the FRCs, as well as considerable design and construction of other FRC formation hardware. In addition, two liner-on-vacuum implosion experiments were also performed on the Shiva Star High Energy Capacitor Bank to verify the scheme that has been proposed to adiabatically compress and heat the FRCs to fusion- relevant densities and temperatures. This scheme used a deformable liner- electrode contact instead of the standard sliding contact in order to allow the placement of an aperture in the electrode that is sufficiently large (8 cm diameter) to enable FRC injection into the liner interior.