Characteristics of an electron-beam rocket pellet accelerator

An electron-beam rocket pellet accelerator has been designed, built, assembled, and tested as a proof-of-principle (POP) apparatus. The main goal of accelerators based on this concept is to use intense electron-beam heating and ablation of a hydrogen propellant stick to accelerate deuterium and/or tritium pellets to ultrahigh speeds (10 to 20 km/s) for the plasma fueling of fusion devices such as the International Thermonuclear Engineering Reactor (ITER). The POP apparatus is described, and initial results of pellet-acceleration experiments are presented. Conceptual ultrahigh-speed pellet accelerators are discussed