Plasma Guns for Magnetized Fuel Targets for PJMIF

This project develops a potentially faster and cheaper approach to fusion energy that would result in reduced energy emissions. In plasma jet driven magneto-inertial fusion (PJMIF), an array of discrete supersonic plasma jets is used to form a spherically imploding plasma liner, which then compresses a magnetized plasma target to fusion conditions. With funding from ARPA-E’s ALPHA program and from Strong Atomics LLC, HyperJet Fusion Corp and HyperV Technologies Corp. have been developing the plasma guns required for an experimental demonstration of the plasma liner formation part. A 36-gun demonstration of an imploding spherical plasma liner is currently under final construction on the PLX facility at LANL and is expected in late 2019. We propose here to begin addressing the next logical step required for a complete PJMIF concept, i.e. developing the magnetized plasma target. We propose to form the target by merging a number of magnetized plasma jets. We propose to accomplish this by adapting the previously developed plasma liner gun to form a magnetized plasma jet by adding a bias magnetic field coil to the gun. This experimental development will take place at HyperJet in a geometry properly simulating the bias field environment that will be seen on a PLX port so the results are directly transferrable to the PLX experiment when ready. The objective of this proposed effort will be the technical development and experimental characterization of a new magnetized plasma jet using a high-performance, high momentum flux, compact contoured-gap coaxial plasma gun appropriate for use on the next stage of the PLX experiment.