These cross sections were measured by the process of passing a deuteron beam into a thin gas target contained behind a thin window of evaporated silicon monoxide. The energy loss in the window was measured by a deceleration technique. Charged particles from the reactions were observed at 90° in the laboratory system with proportional counters. Some results are as follows: for the reaction D(d,p)T, by use of the angular distribution reported by Wenzel and Whaling, the total cross section o-is 15.4 mb with a probable error of 3.2 percent at 100-kev incident deuteron energy; cr=0.629 mb±5 percent at 25 kev. For the reaction D(d,n)JIe z , o-=15.2 mb±3.2 percent at 100 kev;

A system in which electrons are projected radially inwards from a spherical surface, has been proposed for the confinement of a plasma at thermonuclear temperatures. The equilibrium, economics, and stability of such a system are discussed theoretically. Although we conclude that it is of doubtful utility as a thermonuclear reactor, it may be possible to produce in this way small regions of thermonuclear plasma for study. The device appears to be unstable at economic densities. The stability is discussed in terms of a virial, which turns out to be mathematically tractable in this geometry.

No abstract

The stability of a pinched plasma equilibrium with a longitudinal magnetic field superimposed on the characteristic azimuthal magnetic field of the pinch current is studied theoretically. The linearized solutions are developed as helical perturbations of the plasma surface, and the behaviour of these is given for the different cases of uniform longitudinal, longitudinal field zero inside the plasma, and for helices of the same and opposite sense to the helix which describes the total magnetic field. Approximately, the conclusions are: that the longitudinal field has the effect of stabilizing short-wave perturbations, but that some long-wave perturbations remain unstable no matter how large the externally imposed longitudinal magnetic field.

No abstract