Blazing the path to a fusion future

The demonstration of energy gain by nuclear fusion in the laboratory and its industrial utilization as an unlimited energy source has been a grand challenge for physicists and engineers for 70 years. This vision has shifted closer to reality after the successful demonstration of multi-megajoule energy yield from deuterium-tritium plasmas in indirectly driven inertial confinement fusion implosions on the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Currently, several avenues toward power generation by fusion ignition are beginning to emerge -- blazing a path toward a fusion-powered future of resilient energy, but key science and technology hurdles remain. Cornerstone efforts at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, leveraging our X-ray free-electron laser, are visualizing materials and processes down to the atomic level to help build up a large-scale view of the fusion target accelerated by AI-innovation at the intersection of experiments and predictive simulations. In this presentation, I will show how X-ray experiments at ultrafast timescales and ultrahigh pressures and temperatures may hold the key to revealing a path to successful commercial fusion energy.

Speaker: Arianna Gleason, SLAC

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