The pulsed plasma accelerator with focusing electrodes experiments

Abstract

Today, the efforts of scientists to solve problems of fusion associated mainly with magnetic systems, primarily with tokamaks and etc. One of alternative method is a plasma focus (PF) installations, based on the focusing of the plasma beam in a small area with high density. There are same works published last time in which considered this problem, but it wasn't many. We mention the works [1] and [2], where attempts have been made to obtain fusion processes in PF devices. As shoved Niculin [3], increasing of discharge current of PF more than 2 MA haven't been to proportionality increase of plasma density. There is known, that in coaxial guns appear a Hall Effect, which decreased a plasma velocity [4]. If we exclude this phenomenon from plasma, there is possible to increase the energy of plasma particles. But the ways of plasma description, based on average energy 3kT/2 is not suitable for PF devices, as well as Lawson criteria. For these devices the target theory is more applicable. So, we are apology, that not only power, but geometry of experiment play important role. On this way, we have made experiments on basic of pulsed plasma accelerator CPA-30 with short and long electrodes. The experiments showed a significant dependence of the flux focusing parameters on the electrode geometry. Analysis of experiments and calculations show, that the efficiency of plasma compression became much higher with a short electrode. However, as the length of the electrode decreases, no increase in the plasma temperature is observed. The reason for this is the too long discharge time, so the accelerated particles in the plasma can be thermal. To start the synthesis and emission of X-rays from the focus region, calculations show that discharge times on the order of picoseconds are necessary.