Thermonuclear fusion triggered by collapsing standing whistler waves in magnetized overdense plasmas.

Thermal fusion plasmas initiated by standing whistler waves are investigated numerically by two- and one-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. When a standing whistler wave collapses due to the wave breaking of ion plasma waves, the energy of the electromagnetic waves transfers directly to the ion kinetic energy. Here we find that ion heating by use of standing whistler waves is operational even in multidimensional simulations of multi-ion species targets, such as deuterium-tritium (DT) ices and solid ammonia borane (H6BN). The energy conversion efficiency to ions becomes as high as 15% of the injected laser energy, which depends significantly on the target thickness and laser pulse duration. The ion temperature could reach a few tens of keV or much higher if appropriate laser-plasma conditions are selected. DT fusion plasmas generated by this method must be useful as efficient neutron sources. Our numerical simulations suggest that the neutron generation efficiency exceeds 109 n/J per steradian, which is beyond the current achievements of the state-of-the-art laser experiments. Standing whistler-wave heating would expand the experimental possibility for an alternative ignition design of magnetically confined laser fusion and also for more difficult fusion reactions, including the aneutronic proton-boron reaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]