High Voltage Discharges and Neutronics in the Centrifugal Mirror Fusion Experiment (CMFX)

The centrifugal mirror confinement scheme incorporates supersonic rotation of a plasma into a magnetic mirror device. This concept is under experimental investigation in the Centrifugal Mirror Fusion Experiment (CMFX) at the University of Maryland. Plasma E x B rotation is driven by an axial magnetic field and a radial electric field applied through a center electrode with a high voltage pulsed power discharge lasting hundreds of milliseconds. By crowbarring the voltage, we allow the plasma to spin down with a characteristic momentum confinement time, which has been measured in excess of 30 ms. We present results for hydrogen and preliminary results on deuterium discharges with capacitor bank voltages up to 20 kV, and compare that to predictions from MCTrans++, a 0D steady-state scoping tool developed by our group. A diagnostic has been designed with several He-3 detectors calibrated for D-D neutrons. A neutronics code has been developed in OpenMC and is used for comparison to the experimental results. We also discuss upgrades including 50 kV peak discharges.