Improvement of Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Device by Lowed Operating Gas Pressure using Magnetron-Discharge-Based Ion Source

Abstract

An inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) device is studied for a compact fusion neutron/proton source using a magnetron discharge as an external ion source. The addition of ion sources to the IEC device is to enhance the efficiency of fusion reactions by lowering the operating gas pressure and by providing high energetic ion. Doppler shift spectroscopy was carried out to evaluate an improvement of the IEC. It was found that mean energy of fast neutral was increased by 20-50 % in this IEC, as compared to conventional glow-discharge-based IEC