The exact numbers depend on the form of fusion in question, but fusion does have some several places where it has quite substantial x^n growth possibilities, where "n" is definitely greater than one and can be greater than two at times, sometimes even substantially so. This means that there is some real, concrete hope for improvement in a way that, say, solar could never improve more than 4-5x where it is now because the absolutely best it could ever hope for is 100% efficiency. At the core, this is because as you get the plasma hotter and more confined, the rate of fusion goes up very quickly, much much beyond linear increases.
This is laser based fusion, which is super cool, but it might be a stretch to expect 200x more efficient lasers. Still maybe there's other things you could do, like make a bigger fusion reaction. Hydrogen bombs do it, so maybe.
The lasers they use today are 20x less efficient than state of the art. The capacitors are also massively less efficient. So they only "need" to drive the Q factor of the reaction up by ~5x to be positioned to build something with a net energy gain.
Because of the physics of fusion (or ICF) returns on power are non linear. It's very much possible research here results in a path to a "net gain facility".
I wasn't aware actually. I was under the mistaken impression that their progress has only been possible because they were using state of the art lasers. This could actually be possible then, and far sooner than magnetic containment fusion.
