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Luttman, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Luttman, A..

9 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Kinetic simulations of gas breakdown in the dense plasma focus

We describe the first fully-kinetic, collisional, and electromagnetic simulations of the breakdown phase of a MA-scale dense plasma focus and are shown to agree with measured electrical characteristics, including breakdown time. In the model, avalanche ionization is driven by cathode electron emission and this results in incomplete gas breakdown along the insulator. This reinforces the importance of the conditioning process that creates a metallic layer on the insulator surface. The simulations, nonetheless, help explain the relationship between the gas pressure, the insulator length, and the coaxial gap width. In the past, researchers noted three breakdown patterns related to pressure. Simulation and analytic results show that at low pressures, long ionization path lengths lead to volumetric breakdown, while high pressures lead to breakdown across the relatively small coaxial electrode gap. In an intermediate pressure regime, ionization path lengths are comparable to the insulator length which promotes ideal breakdown along the insulator surface.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2017

Development of the dense plasma focus for short-pulse applications

The dense plasma focus (DPF) has long been considered a compact source for pulsed neutrons and has traditionally been optimized for the total neutron yield. Here, we describe the efforts to optimize the DPF for short-pulse applications by introducing a reentrant cathode at the end of the coaxial plasma gun. We reduced the resulting neutron pulse widths by an average of 21±921±9% from the traditional long-drift DPF design. Pulse widths and yields achieved from deuterium-tritium fusion at 2 MA are 61.8±30.761.8±30.7 ns FWHM and 1.84±0.49×10121.84±0.49×10 12 neutrons per shot. Simulations were conducted concurrently to elucidate the DPF operation and confirm the role of the reentrant cathode. Furthermore, a hybrid fluid-kinetic particle-in-cell modeling capability demonstrates correct sheath velocities, plasma instabilities, and fusion yield rates. Consistent with previous findings that the DPF is dominated by beam-target fusion from superthermal ions, we estimate that the thermonuclear contribution is at the 1% level.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Dense Plasma Focus Diagnostic Suite for the Surrogate Static Test

A Neutron Diagnosed Subcritical Experiment (NDSE) has been proposed to measure the reactivity of a subcritical ($k_{eff} <$ 1:0) plutonium experiment. This experiment requires a short, high-intensity neutron pulse delivered to the target material with precise timing. A feasibility study for the NDSE is being conducted jointly by National Security Technologies, LLC, and Los Alamos National Laboratory at Area 11 of the Nevada National Security Site. The goals of this study include characterizing and developing the proposed neutron pulse source, the fast photon detection system, and the shielding system to suppress scattering backgrounds.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Sampling-based Uncertainty Quantification in Deconvolution of X-ray Radiographs

In imaging applications that focus on quantitative analysis{such as X-ray radiography in the security sciences--it is necessary to be able to reliably estimate the uncertainties in the processing algorithms applied to the image data, and deconvolving the system blur out of the image is usually an essential step. In this work we solve the deconvolution problem within a Bayesian framework for edge-enhancing reconstruction with uncertainty quantification. The likelihood is a normal approximation to the Poisson likelihood, and the prior is generated from a classical total variation regularized Poisson deconvolution. Samples from the corresponding posterior distribution are computed using a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach, giving a pointwise measure of uncertainty in the final, deconvolved signal. We demonstrate the results on real data used to calibrate a high-energy X-ray source and show that this approach gives reconstructions as good as classical regularization methods, while mitigating many of their drawbacks.

Deconvolution, Inverse Problems, Markov Chain Mont↗
DOE OSTI2013

Direct Modeling of Scintillator Thickness for Optimal Light Output and Spatial Resolution

It is common in x-ray radiography to use scintillators (e.g., BGO or LSO) to convert x-rays to visible light, which is then recorded by an imaging system. The response of the scintillator depends fundamentally on its thickness, with respect to both its visible light emittance and its spatial resolution. This is important for optimizing light output, signal to noise ratio, or optical response time. Given that it is often cost-prohibitive to procure a variety of scintillator samples and empirically test the performance, it is essential to be able to model and accurately simulate the performance of a scintillator with respect to thickness and other properties, and a direct way of doing this is using Monte Carlo-based radiation transport codes. Such simulations can be expensive in terms of computational time, and the codes are not easily obtained. In this work we first show such simulations, and demonstrate that there is a natural trade-off between light output of a scintillator and its spatial resolution. We then derive a first-principles model that accurately approximates the light output, using straightforward calculations that can be performed quickly with any basic computing software. We compare the results to those obtained from Monte Carlo simulations and show that our simplified model can be used to analyze the tradeoff between emittance and resolution nearly as well as using a full-scale radiation transport code.

Monte Carlo methods, X-ray imaging, scintillation ↗
DOE OSTI2013

A Lagged Diffusivity Method for Computing Total Variation Regularized Fluid Flow

There is a great deal of recent work using optical flow methods for analyzing the dynamics of fluids, and much attention has been paid to developing regularization schemes for variational approaches that are consistent with the physics of fluid flow. In this work we show that using total variation to regularize two different kinds of optical flow functionals leads to very good flow field reconstructions for the kinds of dynamical structures that appear in fluid flow. The first optical flow functional is the classical component-based conservation of intensity, and the second approach is to reconstruct the potential of the flow, rather than the flow components. In the two cases, total variation regularization corresponds to imposing different scientific priors on the solution, which we compute using a variation of the Lagged Diffusivity Fixed Point Iteration. Numerical details are presented, and the results are demonstrated on synthetic data and on a data-driven oceanic flow model.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2013

Estimating the Bias of Local Polynomial Approximation Methods Using the Peano Kernel

The determination of uncertainty of an estimate requires both the variance and the bias of the estimate. Calculating the variance of local polynomial approximation (LPA) estimates is straightforward. We present a method, using the Peano Kernel Theorem, to estimate the bias of LPA estimates and show how this can be used to optimize the LPA parameters in terms of the bias-variance tradeoff. Figures of merit are derived and values calculated for several common methods. The results in the literature are expanded by giving bias error bounds that are valid for all lengths of the smoothing interval, generalizing the currently available asymptotic results that are only valid in the limit as the length of this interval goes to zero.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗