Kinetic instabilities in burning inertial-confinement-fusion plasmas

The creation of burning inertial-confinement fusion (ICF) plasmas in the laboratory is one of the most exciting advances in fusion research in many years. Initial measurements of neutron spectra produced during indirect-drive ICF experiments on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) suggest that kinetic processes could be significantly affecting the evolution of burning deuterium-tritium (DT) plasmas. Although previous research has already identified several non-local and magnetised kinetic phenomena in ICF plasmas, I will reconsider this possibility theoretically in this talk. A fresh examination reveals that the hot-spot boundary of burning DT plasmas like those in recent NIF experiments is generically unstable to a potent combination of electromagnetic kinetic instabilities driven by concurrent electron heat fluxes and alpha-particle-driven currents. The growth rate of the fastest-growing modes is much greater than the evolution time of the implosion dynamics, with important consequences for heat and fast-particle transport. The implication of these instabilities for future ICF platform designs will be discussed.