Recent studies on inertial electrostatic confinement fusion neutron source

Compact neutron sources are in high demand due to its applications in cancer therapy, fusion material studies, non-invasive interrogation of illicit drugs and explosive materials. Such sources are being developed on the principle of Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion (IECF). In such sources, the plasma ions are converged in a purely electrostatic field either in cylindrical or spherical geometry. CPP-IPR is the first institute in India to develop a cylindrical IECF device and demonstrate the fusion neutrons from it. Both the hot and cold cathode discharge techniques are employed to produce the deuterium plasma inside the device. The hot cathode plasma is produced by heating the filaments whereas the cold cathode plasma is produced by the direct current discharge; maintain a higher pressure range inside the device (< 10 mTorr). Different types of discharge modes like star, jet and core modes have been observed in the case of cold cathode discharge which mainly depends upon the filling gas pressure as well as grid wire dimension. It is noticed that the star mode of operation at varying grid wire frequency corroborates to our SIMION results. Presently, the device has been operated in the voltage range of -20kV to -80kV. The emission of fusion neutrons from the device has been confirmed on employing neutron detectors such as handheld neutron monitor and bubble detector. The details of the results would be discussed in the paper. (author)