Soft x-rays measurements in a dense plasma focus

Soft X-Rays emitted from a 2 kJ DPF are detected. Deuterium or a mixture of deuterium and argon is used as filling gas. The DPF is operated in static filling D2 gas pressure (∼ 2 mb) or in gas-puff mode. The image of the emitting area (time integrated) is taken with a 5 holes X-Rays pin-hole camera. The visible light is filtered using Al foils of different thickness in each one of the 5 holes. The image is a fine line (∼ 1 cm long) on the PF axis, into which several bright points can be observed. An estimation of the emitting zone temperature is performed through measurements of transmittance in each hole using radiographic plates densitometry. The background plasma emission corresponds to a temperature between 1 and 2 keV, in both normal and gas-puff modes. The temperature estimated for the bright points results higher by a factor 2 respect to the plasma bulk. Simultaneous measurements of time resolved X-Rays pulses using a PIN diode with Be filter, and both time resolved and time integrated neutron flux detection are performed