Experimental Study of the Variation of Neutron Emission Anisotropy in a Filippov-type Plasma Focus Facility

Abstract

This paper presents the results of experimental studies of the variation of spatial anisotropy in neutron emission with working conditions in a 90 kJ Filippov-type plasma focus device. The working gases are D2 and D2 + 1%Kr. The results of our experiments have shown that the anisotropy factor decreases with increasing the initial pressure and/or discharge energy. Furthermore, it has been observed that by using D2 + 1%Kr as working gas, the variation in anisotropy factor with initial pressure and/or discharge energy is relatively high, but by using D2 it changes slowly. The highest neutron yield has been achieved by using D2 + 1%Kr and a conic insert anode. Thus, we have studied the correlation between neutron yield and anisotropy factor for this case at fixed working conditions from shot to shot. At 16 kV discharge voltage and pressures around optimum, the behavior of anisotropy factor is generally increasing with neutron yield, whereas at low and high pressures, the anisotropy factor does not change significantly with yield.