I think there’s a lot more to it than that, like the heavy uranium tamper, “FOGBANK”, and radiation implosion (whatever that means).
replyIt’s a much more efficient version of inertial confinement fusion like at the NIF.
The efficiency is higher because the device is bigger. To oversimplify a bit, the surface area through which energy is radiated away grows slower than the volume containing the fuel. So heavier fuel "pellets" in bombs (ones in the kilogram to ton range) have a much easier time burning efficiently than the tiny milligram scale fuel pellets at NIF. Tiny fuel pellets cool down too fast. Likewise, multi-megaton fusion bombs are more efficient than the "little" sub-megaton bombs that the US favors (for reasons of compactness/deliverability) in its nuclear weapons stockpile.
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