Kinetic Simulations of Megajoule-Class Dense Plasma Focus Devices

Dense Plasma Focus (DPF) is a co-axial plasma gun that concludes its discharge in a Z-pinch phase. During the Z-pinch, electric field accelerates ions up to several MeV energies. If a deuterium or tritium fill gas is used, the ion beam creates neutrons by fusing during collisions with a dense plasma target as well as the background gas. Due to the low collisionality and significant deviation from the Maxwellian distribution, kinetic simulations are required to describe the pinch phase. We use particle-in-cell code Chicago from the developers of LSP [D. Welch, et.al, Phys. Plasmas 13, 063105 (2006)] to perform simulations of megajoule-class devices. The initial phase of a discharge is simulated using MHD model which is converted to fully kinetic before plasma starts pinching. Results will be presented on model’s agreement of plasma behavior and neutron yield for the Verus Research DPF and for the under-construction LLNL MJOLNIR DPF.