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Professor Steven Rose (Imperial College London)
*Please note that the venue has changed from PLT to L4*
Prospects for the Study of Burning Thermonuclear Plasmas
Thermonuclear burn using Inertial Confinement Fusion is expected to be achieved at the National Ignition Facility in the USA by 2010. It will open up the prospect of a new era of plasma physics experiments and theory. It will allow the investigation of new fundamental science, as well as indicating potential applications that have not hitherto been considered. These opportunities arise because the amplification of energy density provided by thermonuclear fusion will produce plasma conditions that cannot otherwise achieved in the laboratory. The fundamental physics of a burning plasma is, we believe, well enough described to give confidence in ignition using current target designs. However, moving away from those designs provides us with a challenge to our existing theory: the prospect of developing new complex models of plasmas under the most extreme conditions and the opportunity of testing those models experimentally. Such studies also allow us to consider the scientific opportunities for next generation experiments that could access even more extreme conditions.
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