Abstract

The pinch evidence in a deuterium-filled plasma focus (PF) of only tens of joules is presented. The system operates at a very low energy in the tens of joules range (160 nF capacitor bank, 38 nH, 20-35 kV, 32-98 J, ?150 ns current rise time), maintaining the same energy density as in large devices. The typical dip in the current derivative signal and the typical peak in the voltage signal observed in PF devices with energies of 1-1000 kJ, which are associated with pinch compression, were observed in a deuterium-filled PF operating at 50 and 67 J. The time to pinch and time to the peak current versus deuterium filled pressure were also obtained.