Plasma-jet liner — plasma-jet magneto-inertial fusion
A liner made of jets: an array of plasma guns launches high-momentum jets that merge into an imploding spherical plasma liner and compress a magnetised target at its centre. SCPN-MIF-PLASMA-JET-CORE owns the device truth of the plasma_jet_mif configuration.
What the configuration is
The plasma-jet scheme replaces the material liner with plasma: dozens of coaxial guns on a sphere fire dense, fast jets inward at the same instant. If the jets merge on the way, they form a converging spherical shell that compresses the magnetised target plasma at the centre. Because the driver stands off at the chamber wall and nothing solid is destroyed, the scheme aims at repetition; the open questions are whether the discrete jets become one uniform liner and how much of the sphere the array actually covers. The compression, when it happens, is spherical, and that changes the exponents.
What the core owns
- the device boundary: plant and experiment truth, shot lifecycle and configuration policy for gun-array schemes forming an imploding spherical plasma liner;
- jet-array and merging semantics as device truth: gun-array geometry and timing-symmetry declarations, jet merging and liner-formation declarations (Mach-number and uniformity budgets), standoff-driver properties and liner-on-target coupling declarations;
- diagnostic semantics, reference frames and clock identity declarations;
- actuator-response model boundaries and the declared safety envelope; the device-owned CONTROL adapter specification;
- the binding to the SCPN Phase Orchestrator reactor registry (version 1.0.0) and the machine-readable domain manifest.
What it explicitly excludes
- MagLIF-class solid-liner implosion: SCPN-MIF-MAGLIF-CORE; mechanical and liquid liners: SCPN-MIF-LINER-CORE.
- FRC equilibrium, transport and stability physics (a candidate magnetised target): SCPN-FRC-CORE; the pulsed FRC merge-compression workflow: SCPN-MIF-CORE.
- Solver mathematics and validation evidence: SCPN-Fusion-Core, until an exact surface passes the reactor family migration gate; no solver code exists in, or was copied into, the device core.
- Typed signal semantics and comparability: SCPN-Phase-Orchestrator (review-only output, never actuation).
- Control admission and action formation: SCPN-Control is the sole software authority that forms an admitted control action.
- Machine protection: independent systems retain the final veto.
- Portfolio presentation, identity, entitlement and execution gating: SCPN-Studio.
Level-0 physics and its anchor
The core evaluates the array as a forming liner — its mass and kinetic energy, the half-angle one jet subtends at the centre, the fraction of the sphere the caps add up to, the shell density of the liner the jets are meant to form and its ram pressure — and a spherical convergence: density gain \(C^3\) and temperature gain \(C^{3(\gamma-1)}\), whose exponent at \(\gamma = 5/3\) is exactly 2 where the cylindrical families' is four thirds.
Anchored on Hsu et al., arXiv:1201.1879 (2012), which prints 30 jets, 50 km/s, a total liner mass of 300 mg, a total kinetic energy of 376 kJ, a jet radius of 5 cm, an initial mass density of 6.63×10⁻⁴ kg/m³ and a 3 m vacuum chamber. Three printed numbers check one another: half the printed mass times the printed speed squared is 375.0 kJ against the printed 376 (0.27 %); the source prints no launch radius, and the radius at which the printed mass over a shell one jet diameter thick gives the printed density is 0.60 m, inside the chamber — declared, and said to be declared. The printed array covers about five per cent of the sphere as a sum of caps, which is why the filed source is a study of whether the jets merge rather than an assertion that they do.
Load the array in the explorer →
Non-claims
- The merging of discrete jets into a liner is not modelled; the solid angle reported is a sum of cap areas, not a coverage map.
- The compressed density and temperature are the loss-free limits; both are upper bounds, never predictions.
- No equation of motion, equation of state or transport equation is solved; no yield, gain, confinement or breakeven statement is made; no value describes or validates a real machine.
- The repository is not machine-ready, not safety-certified and not reactor-ready; gun-count, target-plasma and fuel choices are configuration facets, not separate claims.
Capabilities and evidence
Evidence maturity computational_prototype, three implemented capabilities, each with its evidence record in VALIDATION.md: the device configuration model, the diagnostic and clock semantics model and level-0 device physics (the closed forms on this page). No parameter set or channel describes any real machine or diagnostic; the claim inventory is empty and verified by the domain validator.