TITLE:
Plasma Focus Studies in Serbia
AUTHORS:
Vladimir Udovičić, Nikola Veselinović, Dušan Joksimović, Radomir Banjanac, Dimitrije Maletić, Dejan Joković, Dragan Lukić
KEYWORDS:
Plasma Focus; The Lee Model Code
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Modern Physics,
Vol.5 No.2,
January
22,
2014
ABSTRACT: The plasma focus experiment in Belgrade, Serbia started
in the late eighties of the last century. The historical overview of the
research activity on the Belgrade plasma focus device (BPFD) will be presented
in this work. The special attention has been made to the present status and the
future plans for the fundamental and applied research as a part of the project
of the studies of rare nuclear and particle processes in nature. BPFD is
intended to operate as optimized neutron source or hard X-ray source. Using
Lee model code as a reference, several upgrades of BPFD must be made: better
shielding against EMI pulse, rearrangement of capacitors bank so that higher
repetition rate can be achieved and also faster digital acquisition system. BPFD can be used for neutron activation or production of short-living
radioisotopes. These radioisotopes will have very low activity which can be
analyzed in the underground Low-Background Laboratory for Nuclear Physics,
Zemun. Also, we compared the obtained experimental data (neutron yield, total
current waveform, working gas pressure) with the numerical simulation code (The
Lee model code) to test our plasma focus machine. Comparison between neutron
yield from our experimental data and neutron scaling laws and neutron yields
derived from computation using the Lee Model code shows good matching, but for better verification of the code, more experimental
data are needed.