FRC formation and trapping by counter injection for MTF liner implosions

A new simplified design is being developed for injecting and trapping Field-Reversed Configurations (FRCs) into liners, which is compatible with the energetic liner implosions of interest for Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF). Conical theta pinches that inject from each end of the liner region are proposed. The conical angle can be chosen to make axial translation out of the conical theta pinch into the liner region occur on approximately the same time scale as radial compression. Thus no crowbar switch is needed for the high-voltage fast-rising current pulse. The toroidal field from conical theta-pinch injection and/or Z-pinch preionization should rapidly annihilate upon merging of the two oppositely directed FRCs. Two dc coils in a Helmholtz-like configuration are all that are needed to serve the functions of cusp, translation, and mirror fields for trapping in the liner. The mirror strength required for trapping is not as critical as when using onesided injection because the merging FRCs have no net momentum when they collide. Previously observed damping of axial kinetic energy suggests that viscous damping parallel to B 'is strong for FRCs with mfp comparable to FRC length, and conversion of directed energy to thermal energy should occur on a time scale comparablemore » to the injection time. The electrical/mechanical details will be described, accompanied by numerical simulations of FRC formation using the MACH2 numerical code.« less