High-energy fusion-product energy-loss measurements. Final technical report, January 1, 1981-December 31, 1983

An experiment designed to examine the slowing down of charged fusion products in ICF plasmas was done. A time-of-flight spectrometer was used to simultaneously measure the energy spectra of D-T alphas and D2 protons escaping from imploded glass microballoons. In order to model fusion-product slowing down in plasmas with nonclassical plasma parameters, the Ion-Sphere (or hard-sphere) potential has been used. The deceleration of fast test ions slowing down off of this potential has been calculated in a straightforward way. An interpolation between the classical slowing-down formula and the Ion-Sphere slowing-down expression in the region between classical and nonclassical plasmas has been derived. This expression, called the Ion-Sphere Interpolation Model, is valid for all fully ionized non-degenerate plasmas. Fusion-product energy deposition in the fuel is necessary for self-heating and burnwave propagation - two effects required for high-gain ICF. The University of Illinois advanced fuel hydrodynamic-burn code, AFBURN, has been used to test the sensitivity of reactor-sized targets to dE/dx. It was found that strongly burning targets are insensitive to both factor of two changes in dE/dx and inclusion of large plasma parameter effects in dE/dx. It was also found that weakly burning targets exhibit a markedly increased sensitivity to these effects