Plasma Focus Studies in Serbia

Abstract

The plasma focus experiment in Belgrade, Serbia started in the late eighties of the last century. The historical overview of the research activity on the Belgrade plasma focus device (BPFD) will be presented in this work. The special attention has been made to the present status and the future plans for the fundamental and applied research as a part of the project of the studies of rare nuclear and particle processes in nature. BPFD is intended to operate as optimized neutron source or hard X-ray source. Using Lee model code as a reference, several upgrades of BPFD must be made: better shielding against EMI pulse, rearrangement of capacitors bank so that higher repetition rate can be achieved and also faster digital acquisition system. BPFD can be used for neutron activation or production of short-living radioisotopes. These radioisotopes will have very low activity which can be analyzed in the underground Low-Background Laboratory for Nuclear Physics, Zemun. Also, we compared the obtained experimental data (neutron yield, total current waveform, working gas pressure) with the numerical simulation code (The Lee model code) to test our plasma focus machine. Comparison between neutron yield from our experimental data and neutron scaling laws and neutron yields derived from computation using the Lee Model code shows good matching, but for better verification of the code, more experimental data are needed.