Our Technology
Common Science
In 1776, Thomas Paine's Common Sense made the complex case for liberty accessible to every colonist. We believe fusion science deserves the same treatment.
Step One
The Spark
Instead of splitting atoms apart (fission), we bring them together (fusion).
How It Works (in plain English)
Plasma-Jet-Driven Magneto-Inertial Fusion
The Liberty Engine.
Plasma-Jet-Driven Magneto-Inertial Fusion. Yes, it’s a mouthful. Here’s what it actually means.
Born from the Plasma Liner Experiment (PLX) at Los Alamos National Laboratory and backed by ARPA-E, our reactor is a hybrid that combines the best of magnetic confinement and inertial confinement fusion. We don’t use building-sized superconducting magnets or stadium-scale laser arrays. We use plasma guns.
Instead of trying to hold a star in place, we ignite it dynamically using a process called PJMIF. Here is how it works in four steps.
Step 01 — Target Injection
The Assembly
A subset of our plasma guns fires deuterium-tritium fuel into the center of the reactor chamber. A magnetic field locks the heat inside, creating a magnetized cloud of plasma — the kindling for our star.
Step 02 — Plasma Liner
The Continental Line
A spherical array of coaxial plasma guns mounted around the chamber walls fire simultaneously, launching jets of heavy plasma (like argon) inward at over 100 kilometers per second — roughly 100 times the speed of a bullet.
Step 03 — Compression
The Squeeze
As those jets converge, they merge to form a spherical shell — a "plasma liner." This liner acts as a three-dimensional piston, slamming into the magnetized fuel target at the center and compressing it with enormous force.
Step 04 — Ignition
E Pluribus Joule
Under this pressure, the magnetic field in the target traps the heat. The fuel compresses until the atoms fuse, releasing a burst of energy. Neutrons carry 80% of that energy outward into a thick liquid blanket, where it becomes heat for power generation. One shot every second. 200 megawatts to the grid.
PJMIF — Four-Stage Reaction
Architectural Advantage
The Standoff Advantage.
A major hurdle for other fusion concepts is that their hardware sits right next to the fusion reaction, causing it to degrade and fail. Liberty Fusion has an architectural advantage called Standoff: our plasma guns are mounted on the perimeter of the chamber, meters away from the fusion event.
No hardware in the blast zone means we can fire rapidly and repeatedly — the foundation of continuous baseload power.
The Hardware
High-Velocity Plasma Guns.
Instead of building-sized lasers, our engine is driven by an array of coaxial plasma guns that fire plasma jets at over 100 km/s. The same gun technology is already being used as a testbed for advanced materials testing — subjecting samples to extreme thermal and plasma environments that simulate the conditions faced by next-generation aerospace and defense systems.
This generates revenue and proves hardware reliability well before our reactors connect to the grid.
Peer-Reviewed Foundation
Research Foundation.
Liberty Fusion’s technology is built on decades of peer-reviewed research conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory, funded by ARPA-E, and published in leading journals. 40 publications spanning plasma liner formation, jet merging dynamics, magnetized target compression, semi-analytic gain models, and reactor concept design.
- 01Magnetized Target Fusion: An Overview
R.C. Kirkpatrick, I.R. Lindemuth, M.S. Ward
Fusion Technology
1995
- 02A Physics Exploratory Experiment on Plasma Liner Formation
Y.C.F. Thio, C.E. Knapp, R.C. Kirkpatrick, R.E. Siemon, P.J. Turchi
Journal of Fusion Energy
2001
- 03Two-dimensional axisymmetric MHD analysis of blow-by in a coaxial plasma accelerator
J.T. Cassibry, Y.C. Thio, S.T. Wu
Physics of Plasmas
2006
- 04Estimates of confinement time and energy gain for plasma liner driven magnetoinertial fusion
J.T. Cassibry, R.J. Cortez, S.C. Hsu, F.D. Witherspoon
Physics of Plasmas
2009
- 05
Fusion Science and Technology
2009
- 06A contoured gap coaxial plasma gun with injected plasma armature
F.D. Witherspoon, A. Case, S.J. Messer, R. Bomgardner II, et al.
Review of Scientific Instruments
2009
- 07Diagnostics for the Plasma Liner Experiment
A.G. Lynn, E. Merritt, M. Gilmore, S.C. Hsu, F.D. Witherspoon, J.T. Cassibry
Review of Scientific Instruments
2010
- 08One-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic scaling studies of imploding spherical plasma liners
T.J. Awe, C.S. Adams, J.S. Davis, D.S. Hanna, S.C. Hsu, J.T. Cassibry
Physics of Plasmas
2011
- 09Spherically Imploding Plasma Liners as a Standoff Driver for Magnetoinertial Fusion
S.C. Hsu, T.J. Awe, S. Brockington, A. Case, J.T. Cassibry, G. Kagan, et al.
IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science
2012
- 10Experimental characterization of railgun-driven supersonic plasma jets
S.C. Hsu, E.C. Merritt, A.L. Moser, T.J. Awe, S.J.E. Brockington, et al.
Physics of Plasmas
2012
- 11Multi-chord fiber-coupled interferometry of supersonic plasma jets
E.C. Merritt, A.G. Lynn, M.A. Gilmore, C. Thoma, J. Loverich, S.C. Hsu
Review of Scientific Instruments
2012
- 12One-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of imploding spherical plasma liners
J.S. Davis, S.C. Hsu, I.E. Golovkin, J.J. MacFarlane, J.T. Cassibry
Physics of Plasmas
2012
- 13Tendency of spherically imploding plasma liners to evolve toward spherical symmetry
J.T. Cassibry, M. Stanic, S.C. Hsu, F.D. Witherspoon, S.I. Abarzhi
Physics of Plasmas
2012
- 14Experimental Characterization of the Stagnation Layer between Two Obliquely Merging Supersonic Plasma Jets
E.C. Merritt, A.L. Moser, S.C. Hsu, J. Loverich, M. Gilmore
Physical Review Letters
2013
- 15Ideal hydrodynamic scaling relations for a stagnated imploding spherical plasma liner
J.T. Cassibry, M. Stanic, S.C. Hsu
Physics of Plasmas
2013
- 16Particle-in-cell simulations of collisionless shock formation via head-on merging of two supersonic plasma jets
C. Thoma, D.R. Welch, S.C. Hsu
Physics of Plasmas
2013
- 17Experimental evidence for collisional shock formation via two obliquely merging supersonic plasma jets
E.C. Merritt, A.L. Moser, S.C. Hsu, C.S. Adams, J.P. Dunn, et al.
Physics of Plasmas
2014
- 18Possible energy gain for a plasma-liner-driven magneto-inertial fusion concept
C.E. Knapp, R.C. Kirkpatrick
Physics of Plasmas
2014
- 19Experimental characterization of a transition from collisionless to collisional interaction
A.L. Moser, S.C. Hsu
Physics of Plasmas
2015
- 20The ignition design space of magnetized target fusion
I.R. Lindemuth
Physics of Plasmas
2015
- 21Laboratory plasma physics experiments using merging supersonic plasma jets
S.C. Hsu, A.L. Moser, E.C. Merritt, C.S. Adams, J.P. Dunn, et al.
Journal of Plasma Physics
2015
- 22Magneto-Inertial Fusion
G.A. Wurden, S.C. Hsu, T.P. Intrator, T.C. Grabowski, J.H. Degnan, et al.
Journal of Fusion Energy
2016
- 23Semi-analytic model of plasma-jet-driven magneto-inertial fusion
S.J. Langendorf, S.C. Hsu
Physics of Plasmas
2017
- 24Experiment to Form and Characterize a Section of a Spherically Imploding Plasma Liner
S.C. Hsu, S.J. Langendorf, K.C. Yates, J.P. Dunn, S. Brockington, et al.
IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science
2018
- 25Physics Criteria for a Subscale Plasma Liner Experiment
S.C. Hsu, Y.C.F. Thio
Journal of Fusion Energy
2018
- 26Experimental Measurements of Ion Heating in Collisional Plasma Shocks
S.J. Langendorf, K.C. Yates, S.C. Hsu, C. Thoma, M. Gilmore
Physical Review Letters
2018
- 27Plasma-Jet-Driven Magneto-Inertial Fusion
Y.C.F. Thio, S.C. Hsu, F.D. Witherspoon, et al.
Fusion Science and Technology
2019
- 28Experimental study of ion heating in obliquely merging hypersonic plasma jets
S.J. Langendorf, K.C. Yates, S.C. Hsu, C. Thoma, M. Gilmore
Physics of Plasmas
2019
- 29Simulation study of the influence of experimental variations on plasma liner structure and quality
W. Shih, R. Samulyak, S.C. Hsu, S.J. Langendorf, K.C. Yates, Y.C.F. Thio
Physics of Plasmas
2019
- 30Magnetized Plasma Target for Plasma-Jet-Driven Magneto-Inertial Fusion
S.C. Hsu, S.J. Langendorf
Journal of Fusion Energy
2019
- 31Experimental characterization of a section of a spherically imploding plasma liner
K.C. Yates, S.J. Langendorf, S.C. Hsu, J.P. Dunn, S. Brockington, et al.
Physics of Plasmas
2020
- 32Particle-in-cell modeling of plasma jet merging in the large-Hall-parameter regime
H. Wen, C. Ren, E.C. Hansen, D. Michta, Y. Zhang, S. Langendorf, P. Tzeferacos
Physics of Plasmas
2022
- 33Multi-camera imaging to characterize jet and liner uniformity on PLX
A.L. LaJoie, F. Chu, S. Langendorf, J. Cassibry, A. Vyas, M. Gilmore
Review of Scientific Instruments
2023
- 34Computational scaling laws for fusion yield in reactor relevant plasma liner MIF
A.C. Vyas, J.T. Cassibry, G. Xu
IEEE Pulsed Power Conference
2023
- 35An investigation of shock formation versus shock mitigation of colliding plasma jets
P. Cagas, J. Juno, A. Hakim, A. LaJoie, F. Chu, S. Langendorf, B. Srinivasan
Physics of Plasmas
2023
- 36Experimental Measurements of Ion Diffusion Coefficients in a Multi-Ion-Species Plasma Shock
F. Chu, A.L. LaJoie, B.D. Keenan, L. Webster, S.J. Langendorf, M.A. Gilmore
Physical Review Letters
2023
- 37
Physics of Plasmas
2023
- 38Formation of a spherical plasma liner for plasma-jet-driven magneto-inertial fusion
A.L. LaJoie, F. Chu, A.E. Brown, S.J. Langendorf, J.P. Dunn, et al.
Physics of Plasmas
2024
- 39Retrospective of the ARPA-E BETHE-GAMOW-Era Fusion Programs and Project Cohorts
S.C. Hsu, M.C. Handley, S.E. Wurzel, P.B. McGrath
Journal of Fusion Energy
2025
- 40
Pre-Print
2025