Magnetized target fusion ignition conditions

Summary form only given, as follows. Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) consists of the hydrodynamic compression of a wall, hot, magnetized DT plasma to ignition conditions. MTF takes advantage of two benefits of a magnetic field in a plasma: reduction of the thermal conductivity and enhancement of the charged particle reaction product energy deposition. To study the ignition conditions, we evaluate the gains brought by compression and fusion and losses dissipated by bremsstrahlung, Compton, conduction and synchrotron. We are able to construct the boundaries for boot-strapping burn (dT/dt/spl ges/0) with or in absence (ICF) of magnetic field. We demonstrate that MTF ignition can occur using very low implosion velocities for plasmas with very low Rho-R and densities (by ICF standards). This is possible because the major heat loss mechanism, thermal conduction is suppressed by megagauss fields and the DT alpha particles are partially trapped within the plasma. We prove, unlike ICF, that the fusion region for MTF is sensitive to the mass of the DT in the target. This sensitivity just reflects the fact that the additional physical processes involved in MTF don´t have the same dependence on density and target radius separately, so the the equations don´t scale in such a simple way with Rho-R. For a target containing 10 mu-gm of DT, the MTF region is considerably smaller than for 100 mu-gm, and even the ICF region is hardly enlarged at all.