During the past two years, the U.S. heavy ion fusion science program has made significant experimental and theoretical progress in simultaneous transverse and longitudinal beam compression, ion-beam-driven warm dense matter targets, high brightness beam transport, advanced theory and numerical simulations, and heavy ion target designs for fusion. First experiments combining radial and longitudi...

We report the first experimental observation of the pionic fusion of two heavy ions. The 12 C(12 C, 24 Mg)π 0 and 12 C(12 C, 24 Na)π + cross sections have been measured to be 208 ± 38 and 182 ± 84 picobarns, respectively, at E cm = 137 MeV. This cross section for heavy-ion pion production, at an energy just 6 MeV above the absolute energy-conservation limit, constrains possible production mecha...

A multi-institutional team led by McDonnell Douglas has undertaken a study which includes the design of both a laser-driven (KrF) and heavy-ion-driven (HI) commercial fusion power reactor. A more general paper describing the overall reactor designs can be found in this proceedings [l]. The cavity, which is the subject of this paper, involves the components surrounding the pellet reaction chambe...

A mechanism for locally density-dependent dynamic parton rearrangement and fusion has been implemented into the Ultrarelativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) approach. The same mechanism has been previously built in the Quark Gluon String Model (QGSM). This rearrangement and fusion approach based on parton coalescence ideas enables the description of multi-particle interactions, namely 3...

Deep inelastic collisions (DICs) can compete strongly with fusion in collisions of heavy nuclei. However, standard coupled-channels calculations do not take DIC process into account. As a result, calculations have been shown to overestimate the fusion cross-section and thus lead to a discrepancy between experimental data and theoretical calculations, particularly at energies above the fusion ba...

The most successful reaction type for the production of heavy nuclei is fusion of two colliding nuclei to form an excited compound nucleus, which subsequently deexcites by evaporation of few neutrons [1]. However, this so called fusion-evaporation reaction is strongly dominated by the fusion–fission reaction which is the main deexcitation channel of the excited compound nuclei [2]. Thus, the in...