Ion Beam Inertial Fusion: Some Issues of Interest for Applied Mathematics.

摘要

The goal of ion beam inertial fusion is to accelerate and focus 2--25 megajoules of particle beams at 150--1500 terawatts of peak power and to use them to implode and ignite pellets of DT fusion fuel for energy generation. For Heavy Ion Fusion, the requirements include 15--450 kiloamperes of say thallium ions in low charge state at about 10 GeV of kinetic energy; or for Light Ion Fusion, many megamperes of lithium ions at some tens of MeV kinetic energy. In this paper we point out from this field of research a few topics which, in the author's opinion, could be of interest for applied mathematics, where further development would also be useful. One of these involves numerical simulations of the ''statistical-fluids'' relevant to the field of highly inhomogeneous nonneutral plasmas (similar to galactic dynamics). Another topic involves issues of geometrical symmetry of axially-placed beam illumination versus spherical implosions of gases in targets; judicious analytical developments could be used to guide simulations of directly driven ion beam targets. 17 refs., 10 figs.