Laser induced neutron production by explosion of the deuterium clusters

Abstract

The high energy deuterium ions serve as compact source of neutrons when fused with either deuterium or tritium atoms. In view of this, the explosion of the deuterium clusters under the influence of the laser pulse with intensity ranging from 1015 to 1019 W/cm2 is being studied along with the effect of the cluster radius and inter-cluster distance. The objective of this article is to study the efficiency of the deuterium cluster as a compact source of neutrons under various laser and cluster parameters. It is being observed that the cluster density (number of clusters per unit volume) is quite important to gain high neutron yield.