Abstract

A new fusion scheme, MICF(magnetically insulated inertially confined fusion) has been proposed^1),2) and some experimental results have been presented²⁾. In MICF, the required ion density and the energy confinement time for ignition at the temperature of 10keV are typically 10²¹/cm³ and 100ns, respectively. These are of intermediate values between those of the inertial confinement fusion and of the magnetic confinement fusion. The idea of this scheme is that the plasma energy is confined by the thermal insulation produced by a laser generated strong magnetic field in a plasma and plasma pressure is sustained by a heavy shell surrounding the plasma.

© 1988 Optical Society of America