Dense Plasma Focus Modeling

Abstract

strongly supports academic freedom and a researcher's right to publish; as an institution, however, the Laboratory does not endorse the viewpoint of a publication or guarantee its technical correctness. position in both of these DPF. At the optimum distance, one main pulse, preceded by a small 'front porch' pulse is formed, and the neutron yield is predicted to be twice that of the current yield. • The energy distribution of the neutron produced provides a stringent test of the fidelity and predictive capability of MHD simulations of DPFs because it reflects the detailed plasma velocities and the electric and magnetic fields produced in the pinch region. • The average neutron energy for the DT DPF in Area 11 is predicted to be 15 MeV, and that for the DD DPF in North Las Vegas is 3 MeV. In both cases, the energy is distributed approximately Gaussianly around the central energy. Both the predicted the central energies and the energy distributions are in good agreement with experiment. • We recommend a series of DD shots, using the current DPF design, to verify the predicted dependence of performance on the reentrant tube position.

On the representation of dense plasma focus as a circuit element

“…The Dense Plasma Focus has been a subject of MHD and kinetic modelling studies for quite a long time [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] which have been reviewed comprehensively [3]. One feature of modern computational models [28,29] of the Dense Plasma Focus is that they give better agreement with experiments if the values of circuit inductance and resistance are suitably chosen to be different from measured values.…”