The probability of escape of the products of charged particles resulting from thermonuclear fusion of advanced fuels in the hotspot

Abstract

Establishing fuel ignition conditions depends on the stability of hotspot ignition. Excessive energy escape from the plasma leads to its cooling and shutdown. In this research, the escape probability of charged particles due to the p/11B fuel fusion has been investigated. First, the contribution of p/11B fuel plasma electrons in the Alpha particle energy loss based on the Krokhin and Rozanov (KR) model and then the auxiliary contribution of plasma ions in the Alpha particle energy loss produced in the hotspot of p/11B fuel, based on Li–Petrasso (LP) calculations were analyzed numerically. By calculating the escape fraction of Alpha particles, it has been shown that the contribution of the stopping power of the electrons of the plasma is dominant at both 70 and 170 keV temperatures, which are the starting temperature of the p/11B fuel reaction and the proper ignition temperature, respectively. By increasing the density of p/11B fuel from 300 to 400 g/cc, it can be seen that at a temperature of 70 keV, the penetration depth of Alpha particles decreases from 1200 to 900 μm based on the KR model. It has also been shown that by reducing the number density ratio of boron to protons from 0.3 to 0.2 and 0.1, due to the reduction of the coupling of electrons and ions, which leads to the reduction of collisions with Alpha particles, the stopping length of Alpha particles increases.