Neutron Production in Linear Deuterium Pinches

Anderson, O.A.; Baker, William R.; Colgate, Stirling A.; Furth, H. P.; Ise, John; Pyle, Robert V.; Wright, Robert E.

doi:10.1103/physrev.109.612

Cited by 39 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In particular he identified that the neutron production was not thermonuclear in origin but due to an acceleration process associated with the mϭ0 instability. This was confirmed in 1958 by Anderson et al 17 and was consistent with earlier parallel work by Carruthers and Davenport 18 and the theoretical work on MHD stability in 1954 by Kruskal and Schwarzschild. 19 However, the compressional pinch is very dynamic, and indeed, as shown in 1960 by Curzon et al,20 it is the Rayleigh-Taylor instability that is dominant.…”

Section: Historysupporting

confidence: 87%

The past, present, and future of Z pinches

et al. 2000

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The Z pinch is enjoying a renaissance as the world's most powerful yet efficient soft x-ray source which can energize large volume hohlraums for indirectly driven inertial confinement fusion. It has the advantages of being efficient and having high energy and power density. Its early history will be traced from the 18th century to the present day. The most notable feature of the Z pinch is its instability. The various regimes of stability analysis will be reviewed, including resistive and finite ion Larmor radius effects. Work in the last 10 years on single fibres, especially of cryogenic deuterium, gave neutrons that were of the same origin, namely, beam-plasma interactions, as reported by Kurchatov. The renaissance has come about through the implosion of arrays of fine wires. Research at Sandia National Laboratory has shown that by using more and finer wires, the x-ray radiation emitted at stagnation increased in power and decreased in pulse width. The understanding of these results has been advanced considerably by theory, simulation and smaller-scale, well diagnosed experiments showing the early uncorrelated mϭ0 instabilities on each wire, the inward jetting of plasma to the axis, the global Rayleigh-Taylor instability and the mitigating effect of nested arrays.

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Section: Historysupporting

confidence: 87%

The past, present, and future of Z pinches

et al. 2000

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“…Previous works on analyzing beam production in DPF and the related fast Z-pinches identified various mechanisms that are thought to be responsible for the observed beams [29], [39]- [48]. These works propose that the high electric fields and accelerating voltage in the pinch stem from a combination of the following: 1) inductively through macroscopic fluid motion from pinch formation; 2) inductively through various plasma instabilities during pinch phase; 3) resistively through a large decrease in plasma conductivity due to microscopic instabilities; and 4) shock physics involved in the colliding plasma sheaths.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dense Plasma Focus <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$Z$</tex></formula>-Pinches for High-Gradient Particle Acceleration

Tang

Adams

Rusnak

2010

IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci.

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The final Z-pinch stage of a dense plasma focus (DPF) could be used as a simple, compact, and potentially rugged plasma-based high-gradient accelerator with fields at the 100-MV/m level. In this paper, we review previously published experimental beam data that indicate the feasibility of such a DPF-based accelerator, qualitatively discuss the physical acceleration processes in terms of the induced voltages, and as a starting point, examine the DPF acceleration potential by numerically applying a self-consistent DPF system model that includes the induced voltage from both macroscopic and instability-driven plasma dynamics. Applications to the remote detection of high explosives and a multistaged acceleration concept are briefly discussed.

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“…These physical processes were first identified by Anderson et al 1 in a study of deuterium pinches in discharge tubes. An unexpectedly high neutron yield was explained by the growth of an m ¼ 0 instability that generated an electric field (E), which axially accelerated deuterium ions to an average energy of 50 keV.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Braginskii transport coefficients for heat conductivity j and resistivity g. Blackbody radiation losses are accounted for and it is assumed that the plasma is optically thin. A fixed current waveform of the form 1 2 I max 1 À cos p t s À Á À Á is applied to the system, where s is the current rise-time are used.…”

Section: A Mhd Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1 Much of this history concerns work to develop deuterium Z-pinches as a fusion energy source, and so the distinction between a hot, thermonuclear (TN) plasma and a beam-target (BT) plasma in which the bulk plasma was relatively cold was crucial. More recently, the deuterium dense plasma focus (DPF) has been developed as a reliable source of MeV neutrons.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Neutron spectra from beam-target reactions in dense Z-pinches

Appelbe

Chittenden

2015

Physics of Plasmas

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The energy spectrum of neutrons emitted by a range of deuterium and deuterium-tritium Z-pinch devices is investigated computationally using a hybrid kinetic-MHD model. 3D MHD simulations are used to model the implosion, stagnation, and break-up of dense plasma focus devices at currents of 70 kA, 500 kA, and 2 MA and also a 15 MA gas puff. Instabilities in the MHD simulations generate large electric and magnetic fields, which accelerate ions during the stagnation and break-up phases. A kinetic model is used to calculate the trajectories of these ions and the neutron spectra produced due to the interaction of these ions with the background plasma. It is found that these beam-target neutron spectra are sensitive to the electric and magnetic fields at stagnation resulting in significant differences in the spectra emitted by each device. Most notably, magnetization of the accelerated ions causes the beam-target spectra to be isotropic for the gas puff simulations. It is also shown that beam-target spectra can have a peak intensity located at a lower energy than the peak intensity of a thermonuclear spectrum. A number of other differences in the shapes of beam-target and thermonuclear spectra are also observed for each device. Finally, significant differences between the shapes of beam-target DD and DT neutron spectra, due to differences in the reaction cross-sections, are illustrated.

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Neutron Production in Linear Deuterium Pinches

Cited by 39 publications

References 6 publications

The past, present, and future of Z pinches

The past, present, and future of Z pinches

Dense Plasma Focus <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$Z$</tex></formula>-Pinches for High-Gradient Particle Acceleration

Neutron spectra from beam-target reactions in dense Z-pinches

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