On the Angular Distribution of Neutrons Protons and X-Rays from a Small Dense Plasma Focus Machine

Time integrated measurements of the angular distributions of neutrons, protons and X-rays are made, inside the discharge chamber of the FN-II device, using passive detectors. A set of detectors was placed on a semi-circular Teflon registered holder, 13 cm. around the plasma column, and covered with 15 μm Al filters, thus eliminating energetic ions from the expansion of the discharge, as well as tritium and helium-3 ions, but not protons and neutrons. A second set was placed on the opposite side of the holder, eliminating protons. It is found that the detectors on the upper side of the holder show two distinctively different distributions of track diameters. The distribution of the smaller ones, is sharper than that of the larger ones, and are presumably originated by a wide angle beam of protons. The distribution of the ones on the lower side of the holder, which can only be attributed to charged particles which result as a recoil of neutron collisions, are slightly shifted to larger diameters. The angular distribution of X-rays is also studied within the chamber with TLD-200 dosimeters. While the neutron and proton angular distributions can be fitted by single maximum distributions, the X-ray one shows two maxima around the axis