Non-Equilibrium Response of Deuterium-Tritium Fusion Plasma: Molecular Dynamics Study of Ion Tail Replenishment

Abstract

It has recently been proposed that transport of energetic deuterium-trition ions (Knudsen layer), owing to their long mean free path, may deplete the tail of the velocity distribution in the vicinity of the Gamow peak and thus serve to greatly reduce the yield of an inertial confinement fusion (ICF) plasma [Molvig \emph{et al.}, \emph{Phys. Rev. Lett.}, 109:095001 (2012)]. Molecular dynamics simulations of the non-equilibrium response of a fusion plasma to ion distribution tail loss show that equilibrium is re-established extremely rapidly, with ion tail replenishment complete in less than 1 ps for $\rho r > 0.01$. The exceedingly fast relaxation of the fusion plasma dynamics, relative to the Fokker-Planck collisional operator, can be understood in terms of a large entropic driving force that pushes the phase space distribution toward a Maxwellian, and is a characteristic of the Lyupanov instability for the Coulomb system. The thermal reactivity $\langle \sigma v \rangle$ for the D(t,n)$\alpha$ fusion reaction is calculated as a function of progress toward equilibrium for a series of densities relevant to ICF hot spot ignition.