Particle-induced thermonuclear fusion

摘要

A nuclear fusion process for igniting a nuclear fusion pellet in a manner similar to that proposed for laser beams uses, an array of pulsed high energy combined particle beams focused to bombard the pellet for isentropically compressing it to a Fermi-degenerate state by thermal blow-off and balanced beam momentum transfer. Each combined particle beam is arranged to produce electric charge neutrality in a volume around the target so that space charge induced expansion is avoided. Each high energy combined beam is produced by merging in neutralizing proportion a convergently focused stream of positive particles and at least one convergently focused stream of negative particles to form an electrically neutralized combined beam having a deBroglie wavelength focal pattern at the region of pellet collision. The momentum and fusible mass of the particle beams reduce the ablation loss and result in a larger fraction of the pellet being available for fusion reaction. Existing particle beam technology makes high energies and high production efficiencies feasible for reducing the power input and reactor size necessary for practical nuclear fusion power.