Numerical Experiments on Oxygen Plasma Focus: Scaling Laws of Soft X-Ray Yields

Abstract

Numerical experiments have been investigated on UNU/ICTP PFF low energy plasma focus device with oxygen filling gas. In these numerical experiments, the temperature window of 119–260 eV has been used as a suitable temperature range for generating oxygen soft X-rays. The Lee model was applied to characterize the UNU/ICTP PFF plasma focus. The optimum soft X-ray yield (Ysxr) was found to be 0.75 J, with the corresponding efficiency of about 0.03 % at pressure of 2.36 Torr and the end axial speed was va = 5 cm/μs. The practical optimum combination of p0, z0 and ‘a’ for oxygen Ysxr was found to be 0.69 Torr, 4.8 cm and 2.366 cm respectively, with the outer radius b = 3.2 cm. This combination gives Ysxr ~ 5 J, with the corresponding efficiency of about 0.16 %. Thus we expect to increase the oxygen Ysxr of UNU/ICTP PFF, without changing the capacitor bank, merely by changing the electrode configuration and operating pressure. Scaling laws on oxygen soft X-ray yield, in terms of storage energies E0, peak discharge current Ipeak and focus pinch current Ipinch were found over the range from 1 kJ to 1 MJ. It was found that the oxygen soft X-ray yields scale well with \( {\text{Y}}_{\text{sxr}} = 2 \times 10^{ - 7} {\text{I}}_{\text{pinch}}^{3.45} \) and \( {\text{Y}}_{\text{sxr}} = 6 \times 10^{ - 7} {\text{I}}_{\text{peak}}^{ 2. 9 2} \) for the low inductance (L0 = 30 nH) (where yields are in J and currents in kA). While the soft X-ray yield scaling laws in terms of storage energies were found to be as \( {\text{Y}}_{\text{sxr,O}} = 5.354 \times {\text{E}}_{0}^{1.12} \) (E0 in kJ and Ysxr in J) with the scaling showing gradual deterioration as E0 rises over the range. The oxygen soft X-ray yield emitted from plasma focus is found to be about 8.7 kJ for storage energy of 1 MJ. The optimum efficiency for soft X-ray yield (1.1 %) is with capacitor bank energy of 120 kJ. This indicates that oxygen plasma focus is a good soft X-ray source when properly designed.