Fusion Reactivities with Drift bi-Maxwellian Ion Velocity Distributions

Abstract

The calculation of fusion reactivity involves a complex six-dimensional integral that takes into account the fusion cross-section and velocity distributions of two reactants. However, a more simplified one-dimensional integral form can be useful in certain cases, such as for studying fusion yield or diagnosing ion energy spectra. This simpler form has been derived in a few special cases, such as for a combination of two Maxwellian distributions, a beam-Maxwellian combination, and a beam-target combination, and can greatly reduce computational costs. In this study, it is shown that the reactivity for two drift bi-Maxwellian reactants with different drift velocities, temperatures, and anisotropies can also be reduced to a one-dimensional form, unifying existing derivations into a single expression. This result is used to investigate the potential enhancement of fusion reactivity due to the combination of beam and temperature anisotropies. For relevant parameters in fusion energy, the enhancement factor can be larger than 20\%, which is particularly significant for proton-boron (p-B11) fusion, as this factor can have a significant impact on the Lawson fusion gain criteria.

12 pages, 10 figures, 1 supplementary material for detail derivation

References in corpus (6)

• Progress toward fusion energy breakeven and gain as measured against the Lawson criterion
• A study of the requirements of p-11B fusion reactor by tokamak system code
• Fusion yield of plasma with velocity-space anisotropy at constant energy
• On the enhancement of nuclear reaction rates in high-temperature plasma
• A Simple and Fast Approach for Computing the Fusion Reactivities with Arbitrary Ion Velocity Distributions
• A Nuclear-Based Diagnostic Scheme for Nonthermal Ion Spectrum in High Energy Density Plasmas Experiments

Cited by in corpus (7)

• ENN's Roadmap for Proton-Boron Fusion Based on Spherical Torus
• Enhancement of Fusion Reactivity under Non-Maxwellian Distributions: Effects of Drift-Ring-Beam, Slowing-Down, and Kappa Super-Thermal Distributions
• A Simple and Fast Approach for Computing the Fusion Reactivities with Arbitrary Ion Velocity Distributions
• On the Upper Bound of Non-Thermal Fusion Reactivity with Fixed Total Energy
• Enhancement of fusion reactivities using non-Maxwellian energy distributions
• Bremsstrahlung Radiation Power in Fusion Plasmas Revisited: Towards Accurate Analytical Fitting
• Approximating the Particle Distribution in Rotating and Tandem Mirror Traps