Thermonuclear burn characteristics of compressed deuterium‐tritium microspheres

The phenomenology of thermonuclear burn in deuterium‐tritium microspheres at high densities is described, and numerical results characterizing the burn for a broad range of initial conditions are given. The fractional burnup, bootstrap‐heating, and depletion of the DT fuel, its expansive disassembly, and thermonuclear ignition by propagating burn from central hot spots in the microspheres are discussed. Extensive numerical results from a 3 T Lagrangian simulation code are presented. The yields Y0 from uniform 10, 1, and 0.1 μg microspheres with densities ρ = 1 to 4 × 104 g/cm3 and temperatures Te = Ti = 1.8 to 100 keV are given. It is shown that Y0 ∼ ρR, ρR < 0.3 (R is the microsphere radius) or, equivalently, Y0 ∼ ρ2/3 for spheres of fixed mass m. The gain‐factor G0 ≡ Y0/mI0 (I0 is the internal energy) is shown to measure burn efficiency in uniform microspheres. More than a four‐fold increment in the gain factor is shown to derive from apportionment of the internal energy in a central hot spot. The limit...