Spatially Resolved Density Measurements of Deuterium Plasma Using Energetic D+ Beam

Abstract

The density distribution of cylindrically symmetric deuterium plasmas can be measured by probing the plasma with an energetic deuterium beam and observing the protons from the D(d,p)T reaction. This technique measures the absolute deuterium density with good spatial resolution and is independent of the electron and ion velocity distributions. Using this method, we determined to within 10% the density distributions of a high current deuterium arc for three different operating conditions. A comparison of these density distributions with optical intensity distributions shows that the optical intensity decreases faster with radius than the deuterium density.