Talk-Polywell.org

How, if at all, would this help fusion?
http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/06/artifi ... -been.html

The description feels wrong.

If validated, I'm not sure how it might help with fusion, but I expect it would upset physics.

hanelyp wrote:The description feels wrong.

If validated, I'm not sure how it might help with fusion, but I expect it would upset physics.

How about a polywell with no cusps, and therefore no cusp losses?


On second thought, this seems to me to be more of a "simulated" monopole phenomena, as opposed to being an actual monopole phenomena.

A Polywell without cusps is not necessarily a good thing. Fusion ion exit, electron recirculation, possible up scattered fuel ion ejection are all dependant on cusps. According to the patent application, the cusp confinement with electron recirculation is 10-100 times poorer than an essentially cuspless system where ExB diffusion is the dominate loss mechanism (that is electron ExB diffusion losses, ion losses without the potential well is much worse, perhaps by a factor of ~ 60 for deuterium). Some improvement may be nice, but limits on thermalization times, etc. are important. One of the major claims is that the electron lifetimes are too short for full thermalization. With longer confinement times the picture could change considerably.

I'm not sure a monopole would be cuspless in any case. It seems there was discussion here once, that while a torus is cuspless, a spherical monopole arrangement would still have two end cusps.

Dan Tibbets