Formation, Compression, and Acceleration of Magnetized Plasmas

Compression and acceleration of magnetized plasmas is relevant to fusion for two reasons. Certain types of magnetized plasmas can be compressed and accelerated without fluid instability growth. These are magnetized plasmas rings or compact toroids1,2. Because of their stability, they can be compressed and accelerated over meters of distance and several microseconds of time, enabling economic scaling to much higher energy operation. Other types of implosions and compressions, e.g., Z-pinches, are limited by instability growth3 to much shorter acceleration distances (a few cm) and times (less than 100 nanoseconds), making it very expensive to scale their operating energies to the fusion regime. An important second advantage of magnetized plasmas is that discussed by Lindemuth and Kirkpatrick in their magnetized target fusion (MTF) concept4. Reduced electron thermal conduction losses and increased alpha energy deposition result in reduced requirements of fuel density-radius product for achieving fusion ignition. In this paper, we discuss two experimental efforts at the Phillips Laboratory relevant to this topic. These are our Compact Toroid2,5,6,7 and Solid Liner/Working Fluid8,910,11 efforts. Though these efforts have potential fusion application, their present support is for the applications of intense X-ray generation and achieving high density and pressure in the laboratory, respectively.