Ion injection

[Axil]

Recent experiments with the Gas Dynamic Trap (GDT) in Novosibirsk Russia have shown that by injecting energetic deuterium and tritium (D-T) ions into warm (D-T) plasma, copious amounts of 14 MeV neutrons can be generated.

Would this technique not work in the Polywell also?

[KitemanSA]

Hmmm. Create a hot plasma ball at the center of a trap and the inject hot ions into it. Isn't that pretty much what Polywell is all about?

[D Tibbets]

Sort of... Differences might be that the D,T ion injection may be a mono energetic beam shot into a hot normalized plasma. The Polywell would have the claimed advantage that the resident hot plasma is also mono energetic, so efficiency is better. This might be a compromise where the injected ion population added to the thermalized plasma ends up in a thermal mixture with the average temperature shifted closer to the upper end. It depends on whether the injected ions undergo significant fusion reactions before thermalizing with the background plasma. Otherwise, I'm guessing it would be much like the neutral beams injected into Tokamaks to help heat the thermalized plasma.
So, does the increased neutron output result from increasing the average temperature of the thermalized plasma (basic Tokamak methodology), is it due to a temporary shift in the thermal distribution, is it a temporary beam target fusion, or is it a combination?

Dan Tibbets