The plasma physics for an early stage of a MagLIF implosion

Summary form only given. The plasma conditions at an early stage of the implosion process in the future MagLIF experiment¹ are of a peculiar nature: very high plasma beta, modest electron magnetization, weak ion magnetization, large axial and radial heat fluxes, and possible formation of dense, radiating plasma layer near the liner. A systematic ordering of these processes will be presented and the following effects will be evaluated analytically: development of a collisional drift instability and possible appearance of enhanced transport in a high-beta plasma (based on Ref. 2); plasma shear-flow and its interaction with drift instabilities; perturbations to the axial magnetic field and conditions for the onset of the stochastic cross-field electron heat transport; penetration of the impurity ions to the plasma core. The conditions where these processes do not lead to significant degradation of plasma confinement will be identified. Possible parameters of smaller-scale experiments satisfying similarity conditions³ needed for the extrapolation to the full-scale experiment will be presented.