Laser-Driven Fusion with Nanosecond Pulses

doi:10.1117/3.2073374.ch9

Book: Laser Plasma Physics: Forces and the Nonlinearity Principle

Author(s): Heinrich Hora

Published: 2016

https://doi.org/10.1117/3.2073374.ch9

Author Affiliations +

Abstract

With the discovery of the laser (Maiman 1960) and following the work of Schawlow and Townes (1958) by Collins et al. (1960), it was evident that this extremely high energy concentration to a short time and small volumes may offer a solution of the energy problems by fusion energy, as immediately realized by the center of Edward Teller (2001, 2005) and explained by Nuckolls (2007). Sakharov (1982) expressed in an unusual way how from the beginning he was fascinated by this concept. Nearly all of the generation of energy in the universe is produced, as in the sun from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium, by converting the released mass difference Dm of the nuclei into energy E according to Einstein’s relation E ¼ Dmc2, where c is the vacuum speed of light.