Non-thermal laser driven plasma-blocks for proton boron avalanche fusion as direct drive option

Fusion energy from protons reacting with ^(11) B,HB11,is extremely difficult or impossible when using thermal ignition by laser irradiation.This changes radically when using picosecond laser pulses with powers above petawatts dominated by nonlinear force driven ultrahigh ac-celeration of plasma blocks for a non-thermal initiation of igniting solid density HB11 fuel.For a cylindrical trapping of the reaction,laser produced ultrahigh magnetic fields above kiloTesla,have to be combined.The experimentally confirmed highly increased HB11 fusion gains due to avalanche reaction may lead to a scheme of an environmentally clean and economic power reactor.

Avalanche boron fusion by laser picosecond block ignition with magnetic trapping for clean and economic reactor

Measured highly elevated gains of proton–boron(HB11) fusion(Picciotto et al., Phys. Rev. X 4, 031030(2014))confirmed the exceptional avalanche reaction process(Lalousis et al., Laser Part. Beams 32, 409(2014); Hora et al.,Laser Part. Beams 33, 607(2015)) for the combination of the non-thermal block ignition using ultrahigh intensity laser pulses of picoseconds duration. The ultrahigh acceleration above 10^(20) cm s^(-2)for plasma blocks was theoretically and numerically predicted since 1978(Hora, Physics of Laser Driven Plasmas(Wiley, 1981), pp. 178 and 179) and measured(Sauerbrey, Phys. Plasmas 3, 4712(1996)) in exact agreement(Hora et al., Phys. Plasmas 14, 072701(2007)) when the dominating force was overcoming thermal processes. This is based on Maxwell's stress tensor by the dielectric properties of plasma leading to the nonlinear(ponderomotive) force f_(NL)resulting in ultra-fast expanding plasma blocks by a dielectric explosion. Combining this with measured ultrahigh magnetic fields and the avalanche process opens an option for an environmentally absolute clean and economic boron fusion power reactor. This is supported also by other experiments with very high HB11 reactions under different conditions(Labaune et al., Nature Commun.4, 2506(2013)).

A Semi-Implicit Fractional Step Method Immersed Boundary Method for the Numerical Simulation of Natural Convection Non-Boussinesq Flows

The paper presents a novel pressure-corrected formulation of the immersed boundary method(IBM)for the simulation of fully compressible non-Boussinesq natural convection flows.The formulation incorporated into the pressure-based fractional step approach facilitates simulation of the flows in the presence of an immersed body characterized by a complex geometry.Here,we first present extensive grid independence and verification studies addressing incompressible pressure-driven flow in an extended channel and non-Boussinesq natural convection flow in a differentially heated cavity.Next,the steady-state non-Boussinesq natural convection flow developing in the presence of hot cylinders of various diameters placed within a cold square cavity is thoroughly investigated.The obtained results are presented and analyzed in terms of the spatial distribution of path lines and temperature fields and of heat flux values typical of the hot cylinder and the cold cavity surfaces.Flow characteristics of multiple steady-state solutions discovered for several configurations are presented and discussed in detail.