Experiments with Imploding Plasma Liners

In a discharge chamber of the type used by Filippov experiments are performed on the interaction of a non-cylindrical implosion of a deuterium or deuterium-xenon mixture plasma sheath, with a central core of pure deuterium injected by a fast valve. The influence of impurities is studied in detail; in very pure discharges, pulses of 6.1010 neutrons are systematically produced using a 33 kV, 80 kJ condenser bank. Careful measurements of the anisotropy of neutron emission clearly indicate that these neutrons are produced through a beam-target interaction, the energy of the beam being of the order of 5 to 10 keV. The differences with the results obtained by other authors are discussed. (author)