Laser spark plugs?

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by pgfpro

With today's technology we should have been able to run a cat less system and obtain even cleaner emissions.

With what technology would that be possible with? (Laser spark plugs?)

[freebeard]

Plasmoids.

Plasmoid
A plasmoid is a coherent structure of plasma and magnetic fields. Plasmoids have been proposed to explain natural phenomena such as ball lightning, magnetic bubbles in the magnetosphere, and objects in cometary tails, in the solar wind, in the solar atmosphere, and in the heliospheric current sheet. Wikipedia

If it was good enough to build the Pyramids, it's good enough for ignitors.

[Isaac Zachary]

A perfect combustion chamber would suddenly heat the entire surface area inside the combustion chamber, bottoms of valves, and top of the piston to the point of ignition.

In any other way, except -perhaps- with a diesel cycle, you end up with unburned fuel along the walls.

[serialk11r]

Laser ignition is super difficult because you need a compact and powerful laser source. The hypothetical improvements would be starting ignition away from the chamber walls, and having multiple laser focal points for multipoint ignition. As with all non-traditional ignition systems, BSFC gain comes from being able to run leaner/more EGR.