Development
of the dense plasma focus for short-pulse applications
The dense
plasma focus (DPF) has long been considered a compact source for pulsed
neutrons and has traditionally been optimized for the total neutron yield. In
this paper, we describe the efforts to optimize the DPF for short-pulse
applications by introducing a reentrant cathode at the end of the coaxial
plasma gun. The resulting neutron pulse widths are reduced by an average of
21±9% from the traditional long-drift DPF design. Pulse widths and yields
achieved from deuterium-tritium fusion at 2 MA are 61.8±30.7 ns FWHM and
1.84±0.49×1012 neutrons per shot.
Link
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/am-pdf/10.1063/1.4973227
Physics of
Plasmas 24, 012702 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4973227
N. Bennett1, M. Blasco1, K. Breeding1, D.
Constantino1, A. DeYoung2, V. DiPuccio1, J. Friedman1, B. Gall1, S. Gardner1,
J. Gatling1, E. C. Hagen1, A. Luttman1, B. T. Meehan1, M. Misch1, S. Molnar1, G.
Morgan2, R. O'Brien1, L. Robbins1, R.
Rundberg2, N. Sipe1, D. R. Welch3, and V. Yuan2