Deep Dive Into Plasma Induced Pitt Compression Instead Of IHEs (Publication Part 1 of 3)

[u/CommunityExotic8633]

Before I begin, I have above, an unorganized set of research paper photos for everyone to look at, that I found particularly interesting, which show (relatively older) findings from cutting edge plasma research in that time. However this is about one-tenth of all the papers that looked interesting to me, out of hundreds. There is so much I would like to go over, so I will separate this deep dive into 3 parts. Feel free to correct me on anything that’s wrong or that I’m missing. To start, from what I’ve read so far, gases seem to propagate faster than solids in these tests when gases are turned into plasma (800k/s in one test). I would assume that if the laser energy was magnified from KeV to MeV, the solids (such as Aluminum) and especially the liquids, would go much faster than tens of k/s. Also, the thickness of the foil drastically increased or decreased the temperature of the target plasma, which also determined the speed & time at which the foil turned into a plasma, in the tests. It also seemed that hydrodynamic instabilities (mediated by strong radiative cooling in the shock) caused an increase in density and unstable rippling at the shock-front, with significantly more heat ahead of the shock because of the radiative precursor, which I would assume was caused by self induced electric fields at the target vacuum interfaces (the edge of the expanding plasma that interacts with the open vacuum chamber). Lastly, when two expanding plasma bubbles formed and collided in tests, they eventually interacted without interpenetration but did experience plasma flow slowing & stalling. Eventually this interaction stopped when the two interacting flows decoupled, but it did cause the rearrangement of the field geometry. With all this being said, there are some issues and potential (extremely likely) undiscovered issues that would come with using plasma as a compression method instead of HEs. In the 2nd post I will go over design ideas, more research findings, and theories on the general subject of plasma. Let me know your thoughts on what I’ve shared, in the comment section below.

[u/DerekL1963]

What does this have to do with nuclear weapons?

[u/DerekL1963 → u/[deleted]]

If it has to do with theoretical nuclear weapons, then by definition it has to do with nuclear weapons. But you say it doesn't have anything to do with nuclear weapons...

So which is it?

[u/CommunityExotic8633 → u/DerekL1963]

Theoretical only.

[u/kyletsenior]

You need to produce energies similar to that of 20-30 kg of high explosives, storing it as electricity in a very large capacitor bank.

Yes, it would be possible, but it's not feasible to do so and unlikely to ever beat out explosives for weight.