The physics of antimatter induced fusion and thermonuclear explosions
The possibility of using antihydrogen for igniting inertia l confinement fusion pellets or triggering large-scale thermonuclear ex plosions is investigated. The number of antiproton annihilations required to start a thermonuclear burn wave in either DT or Li2DT is found to be about 10 21 /� 2 , where � is the compression factor of the fuel to be ignited. We conclude that the financial and energy investments needed to produce such amou nts of antiprotons would confine applications of antimatter trigger ed thermonuclear devices to the military domain.
The Typical Number of Antiprotons Necessary to Heat the Hot Spot in the D-T Fuel Doped with U
In Ref. [2] the use of the annihilation of antiprotons to heat the compressed thermonuclear fuel was proposed. According to Ref. [2], the antiprotons should annihilate on the nuclei of the fuel. Later, the use of annihilation of antiprotons on the heavy nuclei was also discussed [8-10]. The advantage of this reaction is that the ranges of some of its products in the fuel are rather short [8-10]. This enables the realization of the fast ignition of microexplosions [8-10].
Could Antiprotons be Used to Get a Hot, Dense Plasma?
It is well known that the developments in experimental technique dictated by the needs of Nuclear physics have often resulted in some applications in other fields of science. For instance, Nuclear reactors are exploited intensively now by solid-state physicists. Meson factories are also attracting attention as very useful tools for solid-state physics, chemistry, and medicine. A remarkable evolution can be observed in electrostatic tandem generators which are used as mass spectrometers. Here, for example, a further success was achieved in C dating with implications for other isotopes.