Investigation of Proton Beam-Driven Fusion Reactions Generated by an Ultra-Short Petawatt-Scale Laser Pulse

Figure 7

Calculated vs. measured neutron spectra. (a) The cross-sectional data for neutron-producing reactions in BN show that multiple reaction channels for (p, n) and (α,n) exist with relatively high cross sections. The grey and black curves are plots of the p and α distributions used to generate the artificial neutron spectra shown in (b). Note that the alpha-generated neutron spectrum was multiplied by a factor of 1000 for visualization purposes; otherwise, its contribution to the total spectrum would not be visible. The comparison between the calculated and measured spectra shown in (c) shows that it is plausible that the measured neutrons originate from (p, n) reactions, showing its diagnostic potential. An (α, n) contribution to the measurement would fall into the same energy range. A potential (α, n) contribution cannot be resolved with the current measurement sensitivity.

(a)

(b)

(c)