Alternative preheating mechanisms for MagLIF

The Magnetised Liner Inertial Fusion concept has the potential to generate high energy density fusion plasmas with excellent generator coupling efficiency. The concept does however require the use of a preheat system to set the correct adiabat for the fuel, such that the temperatures required for fusion are reached at peak compression. Initial variants of the concept make use of end on laser heating of the fuel. This is potentially problematic due to the non-uniform preheat caused by laser refraction and filamentation and the rapid expansion of the fuel against the liner wall following preheat. In this work we investigate the use of alternative preheat mechanisms.