Volume ignition for inertial confinement fusion tested by different stopping power models

Within the low cost energy alternatives to carbon burning, nuclear fusion based on inertial confinement offers the earliest solution. The existing difficulties with spark (hot spot) ignition are reduced by volume ignition. Two basically different computations with different stopping power models are compared and only minor differences in the fusion gains established. An effective density-radius criterion results in comparably very high values if the strong effect of self-heat is included. copyright 1996 American Institute of Physics