Salient characteristics of the ignitor experiment

The ignitor experiment was the first proposed and designed on the basis of existing technologies in order to study the conditions where the charged fusion reaction products of a deuterium-tritium, magnetically confined plasma can deposit their energy in the plasma and compensate for all its forms of thermal-energy loss. The proposal of this experiment was made possible by the discovery, throught the Alcator line of experiments, of a relevant law governing the confinement of the plasma thermal energy. The Alcator experiments are characterized by high-plasma-density regimes, high magnetic fields and compact dimensions. A set of criteria to compare the potential performance of existing and future experiments is discussed. The long-range evolution of the Alcator-Ignitor line of experiments is pointed out and shown to open the possibility to verify the fusion burn condition of deuterium-deuterium or deuterium-helium 3 (the so-called clean fusion) plasma mixtures. In fact, the present design parameters of ignitor allow for the confinement of the charged particle products of all these reactions