The effect of energy leakage probability on burn propagation in an optically thick fusion plasma (Q2396979)

Summary: In an optically thick plasma, the mean free path of bremsstrahlung photons is smaller than the plasma radius, and radiation can be treated as a photon gas in thermal equilibrium. In these conditions, the black body radiation spectrum exceeds the number of hot photons, and reabsorption processes such as inverse bremsstrahlung radiation and inverse Compton scattering become important. It has been shown that a dense fusion plasma like the one being used in ICF method is initially optically thick. When the fuel pellet is burning, the temperature of its electrons rises (approximately greater than 90 KeV), and the pellet becomes rapidly optically thin. In this paper, we have shown that the energy leakage probability makes electron temperature remain low (approximately smaller than 55 KeV), and as a result the fuel pellet remains optically thick during burning.