Spectroscopic Investigation of a Dense Plasma Focus with Local Plasma and Gas Injection

Charged particle acceleration is being investigated in a dense plasma focus (DPF) driven by the Hawk pulsed-power generator at the Naval Research Laboratory and initialized using local injection of neutral gas and plasma into a vacuum chamber, rather than a conventional neutral gas fill. A neutron yield of 5E10 at a peak current of 670 kA has been measured using rhodium foil activation counters, significantly above the yield expected based on scaling with current from conventional DPFs. A suite of spectroscopic diagnostics, including a high resolution, fiber-coupled, imaging spectrograph, is used to characterize the plasma, both prior to and during the DPF current pulse.