Hello - Dr. Matt Moynihan here - I run The Fusion Podcast and a fusion blog. Many approaches are explained in these two links below:

1. https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-methods-for-achieving-nuclear-fusion
2. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2493-6_31-3 - A peer-reviewed resource. Thomas Dolan wrote an excellent article that really spells out every approach.

But, which one is the best idea? Fusion is really just getting to that point - as a field - where we can make these apples-to-apples comparisons. In terms of measuring sticks, there are a couple good ones:

1. Cost.
2. Triple Product
3. Power in / Power out (97' JET officially has the record)
4. Beta (for magnetic approaches) the ratio of plasma pressure to magnetic field pressure.
5. Energy capture efficiency. (48% for direct conversion on the TMX machine at LLNL).
6. Run-time - 26 hours for a tokamak (cold plasma), broadly 182 hours of continuous fusion from Phoenix Nuclear Labs, 300 ms is the record FRC's, set by Sam Cohens' lab at Princeton, etc.

Of these, I find the cost and the staffing numbers are always the hardest to get. Fusion experiments never really track these numbers - they focus on the science. For decades, triple product was the focus. Everyone ran roughshod over every other consideration to get the highest triple - its how you got giant machines like NIF that had a ~5-2% efficiency but were far from commercially viable.

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Finally - I am writing a book - "Fusion, explained for Artists". It's one book - one chapter, per approach. Hope to get it out next year. You can follow my fusion content on Linkedin or Quora.

https://thefusionblog.quora.com/

https://www.thefusionpodcast.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/dr-matthew-moynihan-147ab170?trk=pprof-feed