The longitudinal confinement of a plasma in a pulsed multi-mirror fusion reactor is investigated. It is shown that the initial plasma energy Wp per unit of reactor cross-section and the initial plasma temperature T0 serve as similarity parameters. One-dimensional numerical calculations of plasma flow along the reactor axis were performed for various Wp and T0 and were used to determine the plasma gain function QE(WP, T0). The region of maximum values of QE lies near T0 = 5 keV for all Wp. Plasm a heating by α-particles becomes substantial for values of QE exceeding unity. At Wp = 20 MJ·cm−2, QE calculated with plasma heating by α-particles exceeds QE as calculated without including such heating by a factor of five. If the mirror ratio is increased by enlarging the cross-section towards the reactor ends, Q is further increased by a factor of two. A value of QE = 1 is achieved at an initial plasma energy of Wp ≈ 5 MJ·cm−2, and QE = 10 is achieved for Wp Wp≈12 MJ·cm−2.
Steady state tokamak reactor based on the bootstrap current