Heavy ions offer a new approach to fusion

Three US laboratories have teamed up to form the Heavy-Ion Fusion Virtual National Laboratory to investigate a novel approach to fusion energy. The IBX is envisioned as a single-beam experiment, possibly upgradable to more beams, with final energy in the 10-20 MeV range. It will incorporate almost all of the physics of the driver (and much engineering at full scale), the exceptions being in the areas of beam-target physics, multiple-beam interactions and high-energy effects such as self-magnetic and inductive effects. In particular, the experiment will be able to study longitudinal beam dynamics, including wave motion on the beam, halo formation and beam heating over intermediate transport lengths, the bending of space-charge- dominated beams, and self-consistent final drift compression, final focus and neutralization.