Considerable progress towards the achievement of thermonuclear burn using inertial confinement fusion has been achieved at the National Ignition Facility in the USA in the last few years. Other drivers, such as the Z-machine at Sandia, are also making progress towards this goal. A burning thermonuclear plasma would provide a unique and extreme plasma environment; in this paper we discuss (a) different theoretical challenges involved in modelling burning plasmas not currently considered, (b) the use of novel machine learning-based methods that might help large facilities reach ignition, and (c) the connections that a burning plasma might have to fundamental physics, including quantum electrodynamics studies, and the replication and exploration of conditions that last occurred in the first few minutes after the Big Bang. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Prospects for high gain inertial fusion energy (part 1)’.

中文翻译：

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模拟燃烧热核等离子体

过去几年，美国国家点火设施在利用惯性约束聚变实现热核燃烧方面取得了相当大的进展。其他驱动程序，例如桑迪亚的 Z-machine，也在朝着这个目标取得进展。燃烧的热核等离子体将提供独特而极端的等离子体环境；在本文中，我们讨论了 (a) 当前未考虑的燃烧等离子体建模所涉及的不同理论挑战，(b) 使用基于机器学习的新方法可能有助于大型设施点火，以及 (c) 燃烧等离子体与燃烧等离子体之间的联系可能需要基础物理学，包括量子电动力学研究，以及对大爆炸后最初几分钟内最后发生的条件的复制和探索。