Possible collaboration with Ukrainian Researcher

A possible theoretical collaboration is developing with a Ukrainian researcher, Anton Tykhyy, who has volunteered to help.

Anton will be working on one of the key unsolved theoretical problems of the DPF, which is exactly how collective instabilities lead to the rapid heating of the ions in the plasmoid by the electrons. Understanding such collective heating will help us to pin down the optimal conditions for DPF fusion. If such heating is important at high densities (as compared with the easier-to-understand heating by individual collisions), it could further improve our prospects for breakeven, since it will tend to reduce the leakage of energy from the electrons through x-ray emission.