Dr. Scott Shu, Program Director, ARPA-E, U.S. Department of Energy

“Fusion concept exploration and basic plasma shock research on the Plasma Liner Experiment at Los Alamos”

Roundtable Discussion at 4:00pm, RLM 11.238

Abstract: The Plasma Liner Experiment (PLX) was built in 2010-2011 at Los Alamos National Laboratory to conduct experiments on hypersonic merging plasma jets formed by pulsed-power-driven railguns and coaxial plasma guns.  Over the years, experiments on PLX have pursued both driver development for plasma-jet-driven magneto-inertial fusion (PJMIF, a fusion concept) and fundamental experimental studies of plasma shocks.  This seminar will provide a review of results from PLX, touching on results from the references below, emphasizing the most recent three-year period.  This work has been supported by US-DOE (FES, ARPA-E, and LDRD).