Thermonuclear Fusion Conditions in an Impurity-Seeded Multicascade Liner Staged Z-Pinch

The implosion dynamics and fusion parameters of a high density θ-pinch plasma driven by a multicascade liner Z-pinch is investigated. The imploding multicascade liner Z-pinch plasma traps an axial magnetic field, compressing it to several megagauss in an extremely short time. The fast changing magnetic flux then induces an azimuthal θ-current on the fiber surface, with a rise time an order of magnitude smaller than the applied Z-pinch current. Numerical simulation shows that for optimum choice of shell thickness of the multicascade liner system, high-densities and temperatures can be realized for fibers seeded with some high-Z impurities. At peak compression the fuel densities of the order of 1026/cm3 and temperature about 10 keV can be achieved on a time scale of the order of 0.5 ns, yielding the Lawson criterion parameter nτ = 1014 s/cm3 for DT-plasma