At the stage of the antiproton-nucleon annihilation chain of events relevant to propulsion the annihilation produces energetic charged pions and gamma rays. If annihilation occurs in a complex nucleus, protons, neutrons, and other nuclear fragments are also produced. The charge, number, and energy of the annihilation products are such that annihilation rocket engine concepts involving relatively low specific impulse (I/sub sp/ approx. = 1000 to 2000 s) and very high I/sub sp/ (3 x 10/sup 7/ s) appear feasible and have efficiencies on the order of 50% for annihilation energy to propulsion energy conversion. At I/sub sp/'s of around 15,000 s, however, it may be that only the kinetic energy of the charged nuclear fragments can be utilized for propulsion in engines of ordinary size. An estimate of this kinetic energy was made from known pieces of experimental and theoretical information. Its value is about 10% of the annihilation energy. Control over the mean penetration depth of protons into matter prior to annihilation is necessary so that annihilation occurs in the proper region within the engine. Control is possible by varying the antiproton kinetic energy to obtain a suitable annihilation cross section. The annihilation cross section at low energies is …

The Schroedinger Integral Equation is derived for an N-body system, and solutions for required Green's functions are obtained. The initial method of numerical solution has yielded the correct ground states and lower excited states of He (test case) and dt..mu... Steps are being taken to improve the numerical accuracy.

For antiproton energies of several eV or less, annihilation in matter occurs through atomic rearrangement processes in which the antiproton becomes bound to a nucleus prior to annihilation. Existing calculations of the antiproton-hydrogen atom rearrangement cross section are semiclassical and employ the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. They also employ various arguments in regard to the behavior of the system when the Born-Oppenheimer approximation breaks down at small antiproton-proton separations. These arguments indicate that rearrangement is essentially irreversible. In the present study, a detailed investigation was made of the antiproton-hydrogen atom system when the Born-Oppenheimer approximation breaks down. The results of this study indicate that the previous arguments were approximately correct, but that there is a significant probability for rearrangement reversing prior to annihilation. This probability is estimated to be about 20%. 8 refs., 4 figs., 2 tabs.

This paper reports the results of calculations of electron impact ionization cross sections for a variety of heavy ions using a distorted wave Born-exchange approximation. The target is described by a Hartree-Fock wavefunction. The scattering matrix element is represented by a triple partial wave expansion over incident, scattered, and ejected (originally bound) continuum states. These partial waves are computed in the potentials associated with the initial target (incident and scattered waves) and the residual ion (ejected waves). A Gauss integration was performed over the distribution of energy between the two final state continuum electrons. For ionization of closed d- and f-subshells, the ejected f-waves were computed in frozen-core term-dependent Hartree-Fock potentials, which include the strong repulsive contribution in singlet terms which arises from the interaction of an excited orbital with an almost closed shell. Ground state correlation was included in some calculations of ionization of d/sup 10/ subshells.

We discuss the acceleration of magnetically-confined plasma rings to provide a driver for ICF. The acceleration of plasma rings is predicted to be efficient and following focusing, to generate ion-bombardment power in the range 10/sup 15/ to 10/sup 16/ W/cm/sup 2/ at a total deposition energy of multimegajoules. The simplicity of plasma ring accelerator suggests that a 5 MJ (on target) driver would cost in the range 1 to 5 $/joule. First experimental tests of the accelerator are described.