Reply To: Fantastic news.

[Aeronaut]

Rezwan wrote: There’s a published article on the effect of cathode structure on neutron yield performance in our very own denseplasmafocus.org website.

The “squirrel cage cathode” is the type with bars/pins/rods, whatever you’re calling them. (Why “squirrel”?)

The rods are more useful than the cylinder for neutron yield. Eric explained this to me using the words “magnetosonic shockwave”.

I am unable to explain this to anyone else, which leads me to conclude that I didn’t fully understand.

The Lee Model (a simplified and much easier to grasp description of how DPFs work) explains the axial phase (runout) as a porous current sheath driving a shock wave ahead of it. The next 4 phases of a cycle deal with radial inward shock wave, it’s reflection when it hits the centerline (more or less), and is then expanded to full width (not quite sure what that is in our squirrel cage, but it sounds like a solid cathode could set up a second reflected shock wave.

Whether the second reflected shock wave would help or hinder the plasmoid is beyond my understanding of these things. in the first three phases, the shock wave jacks the temperature around 2:1…

Hope this helps. And that someone else can make it a little clearer.