Charged particle stopping power effects on ignition: Some results from an exact calculation

A completely rigorous first-principles calculation of the charged particle stopping power has recently been performed by Brown, Preston, and Singleton (BPS). This calculation is exact to leading and next-to-leading order in the plasma number density, including an exact treatment of two-body quantum scattering. The BPS calculation is therefore extremely accurate in the plasma regime realized during the ignition and burn of an inertial confinement fusion capsule. For deuterium-tritium fusion, the 3.5 MeV alpha particle range tends to be 20%-30% longer than most models in the literature have predicted, and the energy deposition into the ions tends to be smaller. Preliminary numerical simulations indicate that this increases the rho R required to achieve ignition. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.