The recent successful demonstration on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) of achieving, for the first time, ignition i.e., a target gain G>1 [Abu-Shawareb2022, Abu-Shawareb2024] has renewed interest in inertial fusion energy (IFE) as a possible source of clean and inexhaustible energy for humanity.
While this historic result has validated the scientific basis for laser-driven inertial fusion, many scientific and technical challenges remain on the path to developing a commercially viable IFE scheme.
Focused Energy is a recent startup pursuing proton fast ignition (PFI), an advanced ignition scheme separating the stages of deuterium-tritium (DT - hydrogen) fuel compression and heating, potentially capable of achieving higher target gains and robust performances.
The success of this approach relies on the ability to generate a proton beam with the right characteristics to heat and ignite the isochoric DT fuel assembly. At the same time, a quasi-spherical robust and effective DT fuel compression around a re-entrant cone needs to be achieved.
The approach that the team follows to study and further optimize the physics of TNSA proton beam generation, focusing, transport and cone-in-shell capsule implosions is based on large-scale numerical studies performed in conditions of interest for PFI, which demand a large number of computational hours.
The team then benchmark the numerical results with experimental results obtained in downscaled conditions, since the lasers needed to perform full-scale experiments do not yet exist nowadays.
Hence, HPC numerical simulations are our number one tool for scientific de-risking of our IFE concept, optimization of our targetry geometry as well as planification of our future experimental facilities.
Valeria Ospina-Bohorquez, Focused Energy - Germany