Recent content by takeTwo

For a gain medium with a bandwidth smaller than the longitudinal mode separation (delta_nu), ManDay is correct. For example, a CO2 laser with collisional broadening of 5-6 MHz per Torr, at 20 Torr, the bandwidth is ~ 100 MHz. Put this medium into a 1m long cavity, delta_nu = c/2L = 150 MHz. With...

This is technically correct. Energy is in Joules. Time is in Seconds. Power is in Watts = Joules/second. In the English language, "work" can mean lifting many bottles of beer from the floor onto the shelves. The "potential energy" of a bottle of beer on the shelf is proportional to the mass of...

Why do this with gravity? Let the vibration direction x have nodes along x. I used to play the guitar. Seems to me that the length of the string must change when it is vibrating. Thus the energy is a combination of kinetic and potential. When you "pluck" the string, all the potential energy is...

I am sure this has been considered. I did a google search ["neutral beams" head on fusion] and found the following Invention (1981, I think). The inventor mentions the problems with head-on collisions leading to de-confinement (see end of this post), but found a way around this (he claims) by...

I think I know where you are coming from. Bottom line, the laser power does not disappear, it is never generated in the first place! If you change this to one laser, passing through a Mach-Zhender interferometer, sending two beams at the same point (and on the same vector) on the paper...

. The list below is the hand waving regarding the physics and technology issues that worry me, again quoting from myself. mheslep; you have picked some more "hand waving" inherent in my two posts. I don't disagree with anything you pointed out. But those seem to me to be more political...

A neutron will naturally decay (~ 10 minute half-life) into a proton and an electron (and some neutrino). Reverse the process and viola! Or, if you have some electrons with energies > 17 MeV or so, if they hit stainless steel (for example), neutrons will be emitted. It's probably a case...

(I know this is a tiny bit off the original question, but I sense a bit of doubt towards the potential of "traditional" approaches to fusion in this thread. Fusion is a passion of mine (along with lasers) so I offer my learning, thoughts and opinions to the Physics Forum regarding what seems to...

OK. I was just thinking out loud. I like analogies: here is another many-bodied, classical system. In any case, doesn't the theorem refer to the lack of stable, static equilibria for classical system under 1/r^2 forces such as coulomb forces and gravitational forces? The long-range...

I'd be interesting as to what kind of accelerator this is. With such high currents, I suspect that it is also large aperture, too. kA/cm^2 time x cm^2. Could it be for neutral-beam heating of tokamaks? On second thought, probably not. Those would be H- ions (H with 2 electrons; or is it H2...

I believe that cyclotrons are indeed still in use today. Somebody was telling be about these being used in hospitals for proton therapy. The problem with cyclotrons for such an application, I was told, is that they are not very tunable in energy. But they are cheap! I gather the magnetic field...

Our solar system is many-bodied. When it formed, it had billions more bodies. Yet we are just now figuring out how *neutral* blobs of rock and gas came together to form the planets beyond Jupiter. Now, add EM fields. Seems rather untraceable for a collections of particles we might call a...

Yeah, RHIC is "conventional", but WOW! Quark-gluon plasmas... tiny black holes... As for using electrons, this is somewhat of a holy-grail in some circles. The concept is simple; take some electrons from a plasma, separate them from the ions, and there will be an electrostatic field that is...

Maybe this has already been discussed. I have read the thread, but it didn't stand out. It is fairly easy to fuse some fraction of the fuel in two beams. But all current designs for either magnetic confinement fusion energy (MFE) or inertial confinement fusion (ICF) ask that the fusion products...