Effects of anode geometry on forward wide-angle neon ion emissions in 3.5 kJ plasma focus device by novel mega-size panorama polycarbonate image detectors

Abstract

Forward wide-angle neon ion emissions in a 3.5 kJ plasma focus device (PFD) were studied using 5 different anode top geometries; hollow-end cylinder, solid triangle, solid hemisphere, hollow-end cone and flat-end cone. Position-sensitive mega-size panorama polycarbonate ion image detectors (MS-PCID) developed by dual-cell circular mega-size electrochemical etching (MS-ECE) systems were applied for processesing wide-angle neon ion images on MS-PCIDs exposed on the PFD cylinder top base under a single pinch shot. The images can be simply observed, analyzed and relatively quantified in terms of ion emission angular distributions even by the unaided eyes. By analysis of the forward neon ion emission images, the ion emission yields, ion emission angular distributions, iso-fluence ion contours and solid angles of ion emissions in 4π PFD space were determined. The neon ion emission yields on the PFD cylinder top base are in an increasing order ~2.1×109, ~2.2 ×109, ~2.8×109, ~2.9×109, and ~3.5×109 neon ions/shot for the 5 stated anode top geometries respectively. The panorama neon ion images as diagnosed even by the unaided eyes demonstrate the lowest and highest ion yields from the hollow-end cylinder and flat-end cone anode tops respectively. Relative dynamic qualitative neon ion spectrometry was made by the unaided eyes demonstrating relative neon ion energy as they appear. The study also demonstrates the unique power of the MS-PCID/MS-ECE imaging system as an advanced state-of-the-art ion imaging method for wide-angle dynamic parametric studies in PFD space and other ion study applications.