An Experiment Simulating the Production, Capture, and Detection of ⁸Li from an ICF Implosion

Inertial confinement Fusion (ICF) is a possible tool for measuring light-ion nuclear cross sections. One way to do this might be to trap and detect the radioactive decays of the product nuclei produced using a doped target capsule. Some of the highest yield light-ion reactions that could be studied using this technique are ⁶Li(t,p)⁸Li and ⁹Be(t,α)⁸Li, both of which produce ⁸Li. In order to simulate this method, a natural lithium film was deposited onto a tungsten substrate, which was then activated via the ⁷Li(d,p)⁸Li reaction using the SUNY Geneseo Pelletron accelerator. A current pulse of up to 1000 A was discharged through the tungsten raising its temperature to as high as about 1500 °C in less than a few milliseconds, causing the lithium to rapidly evaporate and produce a gas of neutral lithium atoms which then travelled outward and stuck to the aluminum getter detector foil of the Short-Lived Isotope Counting System (SLICS). This phoswich detector was used to identify beta particles and count in situ the 840 ms beta decay curve for ⁸Li as a function of time in order to estimate the efficiency of SLICS for trapping and detecting ICF reaction products.