Neutron Production in Exploding-Wire Discharges

High-power pulse generators have been used to produce dense plasmas by the explosion of thin polymer fibers. Sufficiently high in energies have been achieved to produce large neutron yields. Neutron production is attributed mainly to the reaction d(d,n)³He and neutrons are observed when either fibers containing the natural abundance of deuterium or nearly fully deuterated fibers are used. Results are given which show the variation of the neutron yield with initial fiber diameter and with deuterium content.