EUROfusion Glossary

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Glossary Term: Lawson criteria

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Named after the British engineer and physicist John D. Lawson (1923 – 2008), who presented in 1955 an estimation of the required parameters to achieve successful fusion – i.e. more energy out than you have to put in. Lawson’s Criteria specified a minimum value for the product of three parameters, plasma density (n), confinement time (τ) and temperature (T).

Today’s fusion scientists use the triple product as their figure of merit, which uses slightly diffferent figures from Lawson’s exact parameters; nonetheless the spirit of Lawson’s analysis remains.