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Wait if that is true, how does the current icf reactor design get up to fusion temperature using infrared radiation? The photon energy is way below the 10-50 keV that is needed for fusion.
So if I understand right. Concentrating solar energy to a temperature past the surface energy is forbidden by the 2nd law due the hot spot getting hotter than the surface of the sun. So how about the a modification to the system, where the sunlight gets converted into electricity and then converted into laser light. Would that work?
Also, why do the neutrons need to be focused? If the Li-7 plate is directly behind a somewhat thick Be-9 plate (for neutron moderation), shouldn't all the neutrons either hit the Li-7 or reflect back to the Be-9 plate?
The plates in the accelerator increase in potential. The reason for the photomultiplier analogy is that the plates in this idea are arranged in the same way. If each plate is at a slightly more negative voltage than its prior one in the chain, why wouldn't the alpha get accelerated forward?
The application for the accelerator is to power a free electron laser to produce gamma rays. The accelerator is a part of a system that converts visible light energy to gamma ray energy for more transmission with less beam spread over long distances (about a 150 million km). The accelerator needs to be as efficient as possible (I.E. as close to 100% of electric wall power gets converted to beam power) to accommodate for the free electron laser inefficiency.