Neutron production and implosion characteristics of a deuterium gas-puff Z pinch

Experiments on the Z accelerator with deuterium gas puff implosions have produced up to $3.9\times {10}^{13}(\pm 20\%)$ neutrons at 2.34 MeV $(\pm 0.10\mathrm{MeV})$ . Experimentally, the mechanism for generating these neutrons has not been definitively identified through isotropy measurements, but activation diagnostics suggest multiple mechanisms may be responsible. One-, two-, and three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) calculations have indicated that thermonuclear outputs from Z could be expected to be in the $(0.3–1.0)\times {10}^{14}$ range. X-ray diagnostics of plasma conditions, fielded to look at dopant materials in the deuterium, have shown that the stagnated deuterium plasma achieved electron temperatures of $2.2\mathrm{keV}$ and ion densities of $2\times {10}^{20}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-3}$ , in agreement with the MHD calculations.