Effect of Positive Polarity in an Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion Device: Electron Confinement, X-ray Production, and Radiography

TL;DR

This paper investigates how positive polarity in an IECF device affects electron confinement, X-ray production, and radiography, revealing its potential for versatile applications beyond neutron generation.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed study of electron dynamics and X-ray production in IECF devices with positive grid polarity, expanding the understanding of their operational versatility.

Findings

Electron density inside the anode reaches 10^16 m^-3 at 10 kV.

Electron recirculation characteristics are analyzed via velocity distribution.

X-ray imaging and radiography are successfully performed at various voltages.

Abstract

The conventional inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IECF) operation is based on the application of high negative voltage to the central grid which results in the production of neutrons due to the fusion of lighter ions. The neutron has enormous applications in diversified fields. Apart from the neutrons, it can also be used as an application based x-ray source by altering the polarity of the central grid. In this work, the electron dynamics during the positive polarity of the central grid have been studied using an object-oriented particle-in-cell code (XOOPIC). The trapped electron density inside the anode is found to be of the order of 1016 m-3 during 10 kV simulation. The re-circulatory characteristics of the electrons are also studied from the velocity distribution function. The x-ray production, imaging and radiography have been investigated at different voltages and using different structure of the anode. The x-ray emitting zone have been studied via pinhole imaging technique. Lastly, the radiography of metallic as well as biological samples have been studied in the later part of this paper. This study shows the versatile nature of the IECF device in terms of its applications, both in the field of neutron and x-ray.