Thermal-Barrier Decoupling - The Cornerstone Plug Mechanism

The plug's electrostatic potential is the burner's binding gate. A thermal barrier — a local density/potential depression sustained by ECH hot electrons and sloshing ions — decouples the plug potential from the central-cell electrons: the ion-confining-potential requirement drops from 248.75 keV to 167.9 keV (a 33% gate cut), hot-electron heating removes ~1093 MW of central-cell ECH, and in the aggressive limit QE rises from ~1.3 toward 3–5.