HIBALL—A conceptual design study of a heavy-ion driven inertial confinement fusion power plant

Heavy-ion-beam-induced hydrodynamic effects in solid targets

It is expected that after the completion of a new high current injector, the heavy-ion synchrotron (SIS) at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionforschung (GSI) Darmstadt will accelerate U(+28) ions to energies of the order of 200 MeV/u. The use of a powerful rf buncher will reduce the pulse length to about 50 ns, and employment of a multiturn injection scheme will provide 2 x 10(11) particles in the beam that correspond to a total energy of the order of 1 kJ. This upgrade of the SIS, hopefully, will be completed by the end of the year 2001. These beam parameters lead to a specific power deposition of the order of 1-2 TW/g in solid matter that will provide temperatures of about 10 eV. Such low specific power deposition will induce hydrodynamic effects in solid materials, and one may design appropriate beam-target interaction experiments that could be used to investigate the equation of state of matter under extreme conditions. The purpose of this paper is to propose suitable target designs with optimized parameters for the future GSI experiments with the help of one and two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations. Cylindrical geometry is the natural geometry for highly focused ion beams, and therefore cylindrical targets are the most appropriate for this type of interaction experiments. The numerical simulations presented in this paper show that one can experimentally measure the characteristic sound speed in beam heated targets which is an important physical parameter. Moreover, one can study the propagation of ion-beam-induced shock waves in the solid materials. Different values for the specific power deposition, namely, 10, 25, 50, and 100 kJ/g, have been used. In some cases the pulse length is assumed to be 40 ns while in others it is considered to be 50 ns. Various materials including lead, aluminum, and solid neon have been used.