Plasma Density Measurement

Posted by Admin on May 25, 2001 at 11:52 PM
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When a deuterium nuclei fuses with another deuterium nuclei, half of the time they produce tritium nuclei. These tritium nuclei are trapped by the powerful magnetic field of the plasmoid and can then fuse again with the deuterium nuclei, producing a very energetic neutron. The more dense the plasmoid, the faster this reaction goes. So by measuring the number of high energy neutrons from the Deuterium-Tritium “D-T” reaction (about 70 million in the best shot) and comparing them with the number of low energy neutrons from the Deuterium-Deuterium “D-D” reaction (about 10 billion in the same shot), the team found that the density of the plasmoid was as high as 1.7x1021 ions/cm3, some 250 times more dense than the initial gas that filled the chamber.

The density-confinement time product was thus 9x1013 ions-sec/cm3, compared with 1.25x1013 ions-sec/cm3 for the best tokamak results to date.