Download or read book Analysis of Fast Neutral Particles in Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion Devices written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A neutral particle analyzer was engineered specifically for inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion devices for the first time and particularly for studies with relevance to operation with helium-3, an advanced fusion fuel. For experiments with helium, this technique yields energy distributions of escaping fast neutral particles produced by atomic and molecular processes between energetic ions and background gas, as well as the line-of-sight-averaged energy distributions of fast ions. The setup uses a 10 nm carbon foil as a stripping target for incident fast neutral particles and cylindrical electrodes with a variable relative voltage for deflecting ions of a specific energy per unit charge into a continuous electron multiplier. The new diagnostic can be used to study neutral particles with kinetic energies between 5 and 170 keV, with a measured energy resolution of 2-4% between 5 and 30 keV. Initial neutral particle analysis experiments have been performed at cathode voltages up to 60 kV for IEC devices in the glow discharge, external-ion-source and filament-assisted source plasma configurations, with both helium-4 and deuterium gas. Comparisons between experimentally determined neutral-particle energy distributions and predictions by the VICTER and HeVICTER integral-transport numerical codes on spherically convergent ion flow in IEC devices show that the codes do not capture many details of the relevant physics. For helium-4 experiments in the external-ion-source mode, the energy distributions were confirmed to be significantly harder at 0.2 millitorr than at 5 millitorr, which is essential for the prospects of the configuration for increasing helium-3 fusion rates.