Preheating of heavy-ion-beam targets by secondary particles

Abstract

The contribution of different sorts of secondary particles to the preheating of thermonuclear targets driven by heavy-ion beams is analyzed. Two types of illumination geometry are considered: side-on and face-on locations of the fuel with respect to the ion beam. It is shown that a substantial preheating can be expected from (1) nuclear fission fragments for the face-on fuel position and (2) δ-electrons and low-Z nuclear fragments for the side-on fuel location. All the X-ray and gamma photons of various origin are shown to produce a negligible fuel heating.