Thermonuclear rates, the S-factor, and the Gamow peak

What density, temperature, and confinement time would a proposed fusion device need to pass the Lawson criterion, and which of the three does it miss by most? Useful evidence includes a stated power balance including bremsstrahlung, the D-T ignition triple product, the parameter missed by the largest factor, and an explicit ladder from plasma Lawson condition to target gain to wall-plug gain, saying which rungs NIF has already cleared.

This GioPhysics course map is an adaptable learning sequence, not academic credit, accreditation, or a universal university syllabus. It is written for a four-credit course of roughly three lecture hours plus two to three laboratory or computational hours a week across fifteen weeks, and it is deliberately more mathematical than University Physics I–IV: linear algebra and differential equations are working tools here, not background. Twenty units are mapped against a suggested fifteen-week delivery, so several units share a teaching week. Departments differ widely in how much formalism they expect at this stage; follow your institution's published scope, notation, laboratory programme, and assessment rules. A result should be checked against units, signs, limiting cases, and the conditions under which its model was derived.