Design of a Peristaltic Compressor to Adiabatically Compress Plasma Preheated by Magnetic Reconnection

Experiments [1] have shown that almost all of the magnetic energy dissipated during reconnection can be deposited in ions during the merger of two magnetized plasmas. A new fusion concept [2] exploits this result by proposing to merge (more than two) magnetized plasmas to preheat the ions before adiabatic compression toward fusion conditions. The magnetic compression method uses an external double-peaked, traveling magnetic field that propagates via a tapered array of magnetic coils [3]. We have designed an array of capacitors and tapered magnetic coils that together act as a delay line propagating a constant energy magnetic field. As the field travels along this delay line, the decreasing radius and separation of the coils force the field to occupy a decreasing volume V and so the magnetic field strength increases as V^-1/2. We present design considerations and numerical results relevant toward the construction of a practical compressor.

[1] Y. Ono, M. Yamada, T. Akao, and R. Matsumoto, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3328 (1996)

[2] S. You, AIAA Propulsion & Energy, AIAA-2020-3835 (2020)

[3] P. M. Bellan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 43, 858 (1979)