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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Phys.
Sec. Fusion Plasma Physics
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fphy.2024.1440037
This article is part of the Research Topic Proton Boron Nuclear Fusion: From Energy Production to Medical Applications View all 4 articles

A kinetic study of fusion burn waves in compressed deuterium-tritium and proton-boron plasmas

Provisionally accepted
Michael J. Lavell Michael J. Lavell 1Ayden J. Kish Ayden J. Kish 1Andrew T. Sexton Andrew T. Sexton 1Eugene S. Evans Eugene S. Evans 1Ibrahim Mohammad Ibrahim Mohammad 1Sara Gomez-Ramirez Sara Gomez-Ramirez 1William Scullin William Scullin 1Marcus Borscz Marcus Borscz 2Sergey Pikuz Sergey Pikuz 2Tom Mehlhorn Tom Mehlhorn 3Max Tabak Max Tabak 2Greg Ainsworth Greg Ainsworth 2Adam Sefkow Adam Sefkow 1*
  • 1 University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, United States
  • 2 HB11 Energy Holdings Pty Ltd, Freshwater, Australia
  • 3 Other, Beaverton, OR, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    We present particle-in-cell simulations with Monte Carlo collisions of fusion burn waves in compressed deuterium-tritium and proton-boron plasmas. We study the energy balance in the one-dimensional expansion of a hot-spot by simulating Coulomb collisions, fusion reactions, and bremsstrahlung emission with a Monte Carlo model and inverse bremsstrahlung absorption using a new PIC model. This allows us to self-consistently capture the alpha particle heating and radiative losses in the expanding hot-spot and surrounding cold fuel. After verifying our model in a code-to-code comparison with both kinetic and fluid codes for the case of a deuterium-tritium hotspot, we simulate the expansion of a proton-boron hot-spot initialized at 200 keV and 1000 g/cm 3 .We demonstrate that the radiation model extracts energy from the electrons resulting in lower ion temperatures and slower burn wave propagation. Over the course of 10 ps, we find more energy is generated from p-11 B fusion reactions than lost due to bremsstrahlung radiation.

    Keywords: Proton-boron fusion, Burning plasma, Aneutronic fusion, Particle-in-cell, Monte Carlo collisions

    Received: 28 May 2024; Accepted: 26 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lavell, Kish, Sexton, Evans, Mohammad, Gomez-Ramirez, Scullin, Borscz, Pikuz, Mehlhorn, Tabak, Ainsworth and Sefkow. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Adam Sefkow, University of Rochester, Rochester, 14627, New York, United States

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