The 4^th International Workshop on Proton-Boron Fusion will take place in Frascati, from September 30th to October 3rd, 2024.

The conventional route to nuclear fusion for power generation is based on the reaction between deuterium and tritium nuclei, which yields one alpha particle and one neutron. These neutrons pose classical challenges in handling and managing activated materials in the vacuum vessel.

The fusion reaction between a proton and a boron nuclei produces instead three alpha particles and no neutron, and can thus be a solution to this problem. Moreover, the reactants are very abundant in nature and are stable, unlike T in DT reaction.

Unfortunately, the ignition temperature of p-¹¹B is much higher than DT, and this poses severe limits on the exploitation of this reaction in thermonuclear schemes for energy production. Nevertheless, during the last fifteen years a great progress has been achieved in the experimental alpha-particle yield in laser-triggered p-11B experiments. The fast improvement of performances for the new high-power and high-energy lasers requires today thourough theoretical and experimental studies on effective high-yield schemes of laser-driven proton-boron fusion. This, on one side, to investigate potential advanced ignition schemes and, on the other side, for the creation of localized sources of alpha particles for applications, such as for medical treatments.

This Workshop is meant as a moment of information on the new findings about laser-triggered p-¹¹B fusion reactions and of discussions on today technological challenges and future steps in this field, also for the identification of potential paths for funding.

Committees

Chair

Fabrizio Consoli ENEA, Italy

Scientific Committee

Dimitri Batani Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS, CEA, CELIA (Centre Lasers Intenses et Applications), France

Katarzyna Batani Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion, Poland

Fabio Belloni UNSW Sydney, Australia

G. A. P. Cirrone INFN-LNS, Italy

Lorenzo Giuffrida The Extreme Light Infrastructure ERIC, ELI Beamlines Facility, Czech Republic

Dieter Hoffman Xi'an Jiaotong University, China

Daniele Margarone The Extreme Light Infrastructure ERIC, ELI Beamlines Facility, Czech Republic

Antonino Picciotto Fondazione Bruno Kesler, Italy

Michael Tatarakis Hellenic Mediterranean University, Greece

Edmond Turcu UKRI/STFC Central Laser Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK

Local Organizing Committee

M. Scisciò ENEA, Italy

M. Cipriani ENEA, Italy

M. Alonzo ENEA, Italy

G. Cristofari ENEA, Italy

E. Di Ferdinando ENEA, Italy

F. Filippi ENEA, Italy

L. Fioravanti ENEA, Italy

B. Grau Università di Roma Tor Vergata - ENEA, Italy

C. Verona Università di Roma Tor Vergata, Italy

News from: https://agenda.enea.it/event/1011/