Transport and focusing considerations for light-ion ICF

Channel transport of intense light-ion beams will be required for standoff in a survivable diode inertial confinement fusion (ICF) system. The standoff distance will also allow for time-of-flight beam bunching. Beam focusing both at the diode and after exiting the transport channel into a final focusing cell is also required to reduce the radius of the beams to pellet size. Efficient use of the available beam energy is achieved by maintaining beam brightness as well as possible during transport and focusing. Aside from beam bunching, all other beam phenomena which occur between the diode and the target tend to degrade the beam brightness introduced at the source. Beam-plasma stability, radial channel expansion and beam energy losses during transport must also be considered in order to choose the proper channel plasma parameters for good beam transport. For a multimodule system packing constraints are also important. Consideration of all these factors in designing the optimum transport and focusing system have been studied in detail and results will be presented which show the role that each factor plays in the design.