Time Integrated and Time Resolved Neutron Measurements in a Plasma Focus Device

This work reports some experimental results on neutron emission from the pinch phase of the plasma focus device PACO (2 kJ, 31 kV). An evaluation of the building structure influence on neutron yield measurements was made. Special devices supporting CR-39 detectors were designed, constructed and used for this purpose. Scintillator-photomultiplier systems were used to made time-resolved neutron detection. Angular dependence of neutron pulses was observed doing simultaneous measurements at three different angular positions of the time-resolved detectors. Time-of-flight neutron measurements were also done to estimate the scattering influence. This work shows that the scattering effect is not relevant in our experiment, at least for r ≤ 2 m. So that in this limit it is not necessary do any correction by the scattering. The average forward to radial neutron yield anisotropy is found to be 1.59 ±0.12. The neutron energy anisotropy measurements by time-of-flight don't offer relevant results about the neutron production mechanism