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 ~2.1×10 9 , ~2.2 ×10 9 , ~2.8×10 9 , ~2.9×10 9 , and ~3.5×10 9 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. K: Nuclear instruments and methods for hot plasma diagnostics; Plasma diagnosticscharged-particle spectroscopy; Heavy-ion detectors; Particle tracking detectors (Solid-state detectors)1Corresponding author.

Effects of ECE duration on alpha particle tracks in polycarbonate nuclear track detectors over broad ranges of fluence and energy

“…PCTDs have unique characteristics for many applications in particular for analysis and diagnosis of panorama 4π emission high flux beams of ions such as hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and neon from PFDs when processed by 50 Hz-HV ECE method with some unique characteristics as reported before [4,[10][11][12]. However, in some applications, detection of ions with fluences >10 7 (tracks/cm 2 ) is required [4,10,11]. Although, charged particle tracks processed by an ECE method are explicitly separated from each other even up to high densities, accurate determination of track density and diameter by visual track counting under a light microscope or even by computerized counting becomes highly difficult due to track overlaps.…”

“…PCTDs have unique characteristics for many applications in particular for analysis and diagnosis of panorama 4π emission high flux beams of ions such as hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and neon from PFDs when processed by 50 Hz-HV ECE method with some unique characteristics as reported before [4,[10][11][12]. However, in some applications, detection of ions with fluences >10 7 (tracks/cm 2 ) is required [4,10,11].…”