CER SEMINAR

Modeling of the Hawk Dense Plasma Focus Peter Stoltz, Tech-X Corporation

Peter Stoltz
May 14, 2018, 11:00am - 12:00pm, SERF Room 232

ABSTRACT:

Researchers at Naval Research Laboratory are operating a dense plasma focus with a high inductance pulsed power driver called Hawk.  The goals of this experiment are to investigate generation of high electric fields and associated high-energy particle beams in imploding plasmas. Hawk is a unique facility for testing these ideas due to its high inductance (~1 uH), fast rise time (~1 us) and capability to inject target gas independently of the drive plasma.  Researchers at Tech-X are helping with modeling support, using a finite-volume, unstructured mesh fluid code, USim.  Presently, we are using an ideal MHD model of the fluid, but USim also supports extended MHD and two fluid models.  We compare simulation results for the neutron yield and emitted light with initial data from Hawk.

BIO:

Peter Stoltz is vice-president of computational beam and plasma physics at Tech-X Corporation. He received his B.A. in Physics from the University of California Berkeley in 1989, and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Colorado in 1996. He was a postdoctoral researcher in computational beam physics at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory from 1996-1998 and a postdoctoral researcher working on large-scale modeling of x-ray sources at Sandia National Laboratories from 1998-2000. In 2000, he joined Tech-X Corporation, a company specializing in scientific computing.  His research interests include computer modeling of high-power microwave sources, compact accelerating structures and industrial plasmas.