Experimental study of fusion neutron and proton yields produced by petawatt-laser-irradiated D2-3He or CD4-3He clustering gases

Abstract

We report on experiments in which the Texas Petawatt laser irradiated a mixture of deuterium or deuterated methane clusters and helium-3 gas, generating three types of nuclear fusion reactions: D(d, 3He)n, D(d, t)p and 3He(d, p)4He. We measured the yields of fusion neutrons and protons from these reactions and found them to agree with yields based on a simple cylindrical plasma model using known cross sections and measured plasma parameters. Within our measurement errors, the fusion products were isotropically distributed. Plasma temperatures, important for the cross sections, were determined by two independent methods: (1) deuterium ion time-of-flight, and (2) utilizing the ratio of neutron yield to proton yield from D(d, 3He)n and 3He(d, p)4He reactions, respectively. This experiment produced the highest ion temperature ever achieved with laser-irradiated deuterium clusters.

16 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Measurement of the plasma astrophysical S factor for the 3He(D, p)4He reaction in exploding molecular clusters
• Temperature measurements of fusion plasmas produced by petawatt laser-irradiated D2-3He or CD4-3He clustering gases
• Optimum laser intensity for the production of energetic deuterium ions from laser-cluster interaction

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Uniform heating of materials into the warm dense matter regime with laser-driven quasi-monoenergetic ion beams
• Model-independent determination of the astrophysical S-factor in laser-induced fusion plasmas
• Thermal and chaotic distributions of plasma in laser driven Coulomb explosions of deuterium clusters
• Demonstration of Laser-produced Neutron Diagnostic by Radiative Capture Gamma-rays
• Coulomb cluster explosion boosted by an electrical pulse -- neutron source, diagnostic tool, and test of nuclear fusion efficiency