Charged particle stopping power effects on ignition: Some results from an exact calculation

Abstract

A completely rigorous first-principles calculation of the charged particle stopping power has recently been performed by Brown, Preston, and Singleton (BPS). This calculation is exact to leading and next-to-leading order in the plasma number density, including an exact treatment of two-body quantum scattering. The BPS calculation is therefore extremely accurate in the plasma regime realized during the ignition and burn of an inertial confinement fusion capsule. For deuterium-tritium fusion, the 3.5MeV alpha particle range tends to be 20%–30% longer than most models in the literature have predicted, and the energy deposition into the ions tends to be smaller. Preliminary numerical simulations indicate that this increases the ρR required to achieve ignition.