SBIR-STTR Award

When a muon encounters a hydrogen atom, it orbits closer to the nucleus than an electron, screening the nuclear charge and facilitating nuclear fusion. Several groups have observed over 100 fusions per muon in cold, dense mixtures of deuterium and tritium. The muon can stick to the alpha particle produced by the fusion reaction, resulting in a probable upper limit of 200 - 500 fusions per muon at optimized conditions. A high-energy ion beam directed at a target produces pions that decay into muons. A power plant would consist of an ion beam accelerator, muon production target, fusion reaction chamber, breeding blanket, and heat engine. The ultimate physical limit on muon production energy is the mass-energy of a muon, 105 MeV. Scientific breakeven would occur at just five fusions per muon at this theoretical limit. In practice, many loss mechanisms increase the beam energy needed to produce a muon. The beam energy per muon with a state-of-the-art carbon rod or plate target is 5 GeV, corresponding to 300 fusions per muon for scientific breakeven. We have developed a software platform to design and simulate advanced muon production targets. Using this software, we have identified a design that requires only 3.3 GeV of beam energy per muon. The target consists of a series of plates, with electric fields applied between the plates. A perpendicular magnetic field suppresses electron avalanches. The internal fields allow more of the pions produced by the ion beam to exit the target and facilitate their collection into a collimated pion beam. We want to develop a design with further reduced beam energy per muon to strengthen the case for the feasibility of power production using muon-catalyzed fusion. We propose using machine-learning-assisted generative design, high-performance computing resources, and creative designers to identify and simulate targets with lower beam energy per muon and fabrication cost. We hope this work will eventually lead to a proposal for a megawatt-scale breakeven experiment and ultimately to the commercial development of muon-catalyzed fusion as a new clean, reliable, low-cost energy source.

When a muon encounters a hydrogen atom, it orbits closer to the nucleus than an electron, screening the nuclear charge and facilitating nuclear fusion. Several groups have observed over 100 fusions per muon in cold, dense mixtures of deuterium and tritium. The muon can stick to the alpha particle produced by the fusion reaction, resulting in a probable upper limit of 200 - 500 fusions per muon at optimized conditions. A high-energy ion beam directed at a target produces pions that decay into muons. A power plant would consist of an ion beam accelerator, muon production target, fusion reaction chamber, breeding blanket, and heat engine. The ultimate physical limit on muon production energy is the mass-energy of a muon, 105 MeV. Scientific breakeven would occur at just five fusions per muon at this theoretical limit. In practice, many loss mechanisms increase the beam energy needed to produce a muon. The beam energy per muon with a state-of-the-art carbon rod or plate target is 5 GeV, corresponding to 300 fusions per muon for scientific breakeven. We have developed a software platform to design and simulate advanced muon production targets. Using this software, we have identified a design that requires only 3.3 GeV of beam energy per muon. The target consists of a series of plates, with electric fields applied between the plates. A perpendicular magnetic field suppresses electron avalanches. The internal fields allow more of the pions produced by the ion beam to exit the target and facilitate their collection into a collimated pion beam. We want to develop a design with further reduced beam energy per muon to strengthen the case for the feasibility of power production using muon-catalyzed fusion. We propose using machine-learning-assisted generative design, high-performance computing resources, and creative designers to identify and simulate targets with lower beam energy per muon and fabrication cost. We hope this work will eventually lead to a proposal for a megawatt-scale breakeven experiment and ultimately to the commercial development of muon-catalyzed fusion as a new clean, reliable, low-cost energy source.