Measurements of Neutrons Created in a Staged Z-Pinch With Krypton Liner and Deuterium Target at a 1-MA Pulsed Power Generator

Gas-puff fast Z-pinches are of considerable interest as a neutron source that can be operated in a repeatable mode and which may lead to a magneto-inertial fusion energy source. In our experiments on the 1-MA pulsed power generator Zebra a krypton gas shell was imploded to compress a central deuterium gas column. An external axial magnetic field $B_{z} = 0.5-3.0 \text {kG}$ was used to stabilize the pinch against magneto Rayleigh–Taylor instabilities. A consistent neutron yield of $(0.83 \pm 0.19) \times 10^{10}$ was measured with a silver activation detector with $B_{z}\ge 0.5 \text {kG}$ . The neutron emission isotropy was assessed with three neutron time of flight (nTOF) detectors.