Laser-confined fusion

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2005 Jan;71(1 Pt 2):015401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.71.015401. Epub 2005 Jan 14.

Abstract

An approach for producing a large quantity of neutrons is proposed. It involves compression of a fuel foil and confinement of the resulting plasma between two intense laser pulses. It is shown that two circularly polarized laser pulses of amplitude a = 7 illuminating a deuterium-tritium foil of areal density 3.3 x 10(18) cm(-2) can produce about 4.2 x 10(6) neutrons per joule of the input laser energy.