Novel deuterium–tritium (DT) neutron activation diagnostics for increased neutron yield operations at Sandia's Z-facility (invited).

This article focuses on the development and calibration of new neutron activation diagnostics at Sandia National Laboratories' Z-facility to measure deuterium–tritium (DT) neutron yields in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments. As DT neutron production is expected to increase significantly with the introduction of tritium fuel, the existing copper activation diagnostic faces limitations due to detector saturation and counting errors. To address this, the authors propose fluorine activation using the 19F(n,2n)18F reaction as a primary DT-neutron diagnostic, offering a lower cross section and longer half-life that reduce counting issues while leveraging existing detection infrastructure. Additionally, an oxygen-probe based on the 16O(n,p)16N reaction is introduced for prompt, though less precise, DT-neutron yield measurements. Both diagnostics have been demonstrated and preliminarily calibrated using neutron sources at Sandia's Ion Beam Laboratory, with plans for implementation in future DT-fuel ICF experiments at the Z-facility.