Experimental Study of Neutron Emission Characteristics in SBUPF1 Plasma Focus Device

In this work, neutron production of SBUPF1 (a 2.5 kJ Mather type plasma focus device) at various pressures of deuterium and two different anode lengths (12 cm, 18 cm) were studied. Three silver activation counters were used at three different angels (0º, 45º and 90º) in order to determine the angular distribution of neutrons. The neutron and hard x-ray pulses were registered by a ø5"×5" plastic scintillator. These pulses were further used to determine the average energy of the detected neutrons. Experiments showed that for the 18cm anode at the optimum gas pressure, the neutron generation has decreased while the neutron yield at this pressure has increased. Under these conditions, the optimum pressure is 6 mbar, the neutron yield at the optimum pressure is about 6.4×107 per pulse, and the average energy of neutrons is 2.24 MeV.