Ablative expansion plasmas in light ion beam fusion

The ablative, quasisteady expansion flow of a plasma generated by impinging a pellet by an intense light ion beam pulse is analysed. Profile of beam density and velocity and plasma density, velocity, and temperatures as functions of the radius are obtained from the analysis. The ablation pressure P a and the ablated mass rate, for a given pellet radius r a , are found as functions of both the beam energy per nucleon E 0 and the current intensity I 0 . The results may be used for determining the instantaneous E 0 (or I 0 ), for a given I 0 (or E 0 ), required to generate given values of P a and r a ; consequently, if the time laws P a (t) and r a (t), for optimal pellet compression, are obtained independently, the results yield the light ion beam energy history E 0 (t) I 0 (t) for a given or (I 0 (t) for E 0 (t) given).