  In the double-cone ignition scheme, compressed fuels in two head-on cones are
ejected to collide, forming a colliding plasma with an isochoric distribution
for rapid heating by high flux fast electrons from picosecond petawatt laser
beams in the perpendicular direction from the cone axis. In this work, we
investigate the effects of quantum degeneracy on the transport of fast
electrons in the colliding plasma, which rapidly evolves from the quantum
degenerate in the outer region of the plasma to the classical state in the
concentric core region heated by the colliding fronts of the plasma jets. With
large scale particle-in-cell simulations, it is found that the self-generated
magnetic field generated by the transport of fast electrons in the quantum
degenerate state at the outer region is much stronger than in the corresponding
classical state with the same fuel density in the core region. Theoretical
analysis of the growth of the self-generated magnetic field is developed to
explain the simulation results. Such strong self-generated magnetic fields in
the quantum degenerate states can pinch the axially injected fast electrons to
deposit their energy in the concentric core region, improving the heating
efficiency for fast ignition.
