ABSTRACT
The whole inertial confinement fusion (ICF) process starts with the creation of beams in the driver. Lasers are by no means the only option as drivers for ICF. In fact it is believed that for energy-producing ICF power plants, heavy-ion beams would be much more suitable than lasers (see Chapters 9 and 10). The advantage of heavy-ion beams would be a high repetition rate for the driver delivering its energy into the target, and a much better efficiency. The driver efficiency ηdriver is defined as the ratio of “wall-plug” electrical power Eel that has been converted to driver energy Edriver ,
ηdriver = Eel
Edriver . (2.1)
Heavy-ion drivers have a 2-4 times higher efficency than lasers. However, heavy-ion beam facilities are still far from delivering sufficient energy onto a target. Laser systems are much more advanced in this respect and it is likely that the first inertial fusion reactor will still use a laser driver. Therefore we will restrict the discussion in this chapter to lasers. However, in Chapters 9-11, different driver options such as heavy-ion and the socalled fast ignition scheme will be considered in detail.
