Eur. Phys. J. D (2016) 70: 49
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2016-60439-8

Regular Article

Short-lived radioisotopes scaling with energy in plasma focus device

Department of Energy Engineering and Physics, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

^a e-mail: mortezahabibi@aut.ac.ir

Received: 29 July 2015
Received in final form: 23 November 2015
Published online: 10 March 2016

Abstract

The computational investigation of the correlation between the achievable reaction yield and discharge energy for a plasma focus device (PFD) is presented. Radioisotope production in PFDs with applicable activities is highly dependent on establishing the related scaling law. Carbon target is bombarded by high energy deuterons and short-lived radioisotope of ¹³N is produced through ¹²C(d,n)¹³N in which the threshold energy is not very high. Both computed and measured ion energy spectra are used to estimate and optimize the scaling law. It is shown that the number of ions emitted from the pinch region for a device operating under optimized conditions is linearly proportional to the discharge energy of the PFD.