New concept on the application of supersonic gas jets for space charge neutralized beam transport in an ICF reactor chamber

One of the most crucial problems of a heavy ion fusion (HIF) driver is the transport of the beam from the final focusing system to the fusion target. The conventional focusing scheme is based on ballistic transport, assuming that all space charge effects can be kept sufficiently small. To achieve a space charge neutralized beam transport, other more sophisticated schemes like beam transport in a plasma channel have been suggested. Inspired by the results of the first experiments on the generation of adequate discharge-driven plasmas, we suggest applying a pulsed supersonic gas jet for the high-current discharge channel creation, thereby improving the plasma channel stability. The supersonic jet is produced by a gas expansion into the reactor chamber through a converging-diverging nozzle that has a hollow inner tube on its axis for both heavy ion and UV laser beam injection.