LPP Experiment Update - Nov. 2, 2009

An official update from LPP.  The crew is back to firing shots as of yesterday.  Here’s the story:

Shortly after the first shots, experiments were interrupted by a failure of the trigger circuit that fires the switches. We returned the trigger module to the manufacture, R.E Beverly, who found it working and, indeed it was working again when we got it back. We took the down time to separate the grounding systems for the trigger from that for the device itself to reduce noise and danger to the trigger electronics.

In addition, we are starting to install the many instruments we will be using to observe the plasma. For the next series of shots, we will have installed a radiation detector to observe the total neutron and photon output and the lower Rogowski coil on the drift tube, which will measure the ion beam. This will be in addition to the main Rogowski coil, which measures the current through the electrodes.

We intend to add the rest of the instruments one-by-one over the next few weeks, so as to move our experiments along as rapidly as possible, rather than waiting for all instruments to be installed. We plan to install the Faraday cups, which will also measure the ion beams, the pin hole camera, which will measure the radius of the plasmoid, and the time-of-flight neutron detectors which will measure ion energy (temperature) and plasmoid density in the next few weeks. Before the end of the year we will install all the rest of the instruments.