Study on discharge characteristics of inertial electrostatic confinement fusion

An inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion device is possibly used for the neutron source that has the ability to produce the neutrons of 10/sup 5/-10/sup 7//s by the use of the glow discharge. It works more efficient at the condition of the high voltage and the low pressure. It, however, is difficult to keep the continuous operation at the low-pressure because the glow discharge is not stable. We made the two-dimensional Monte Carlo PIC code including atomic processes to simulate the discharge and to show the results that most of D/sub 2//sup +/ ionized the D/sub 2/ gas at the particular space near the cathode.