Production of large hydrogen clusters in condensed molecular beams

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Abstract
Intense hydrogen‐cluster beams having velocities of about 500 m/sec can be produced by expansion of precooled hydrogen gas out of a nozzle into high vacuum. They are of interest for the compensation of particle losses in thermonuclear devices. The dependence of the penetration depth into the plasma on the velocity and the size of the clusters is still unknown. In order to study the influence of the latter the available beams should cover a range of cluster size as wide as possible. Using a cryostat which can be operated at temperatures above the critical one, the range has been extended by about three orders of magnitude up to a mean size of about 109 H atoms per cluster. The cluster sizes have been determined by light‐scattering technique. This method is particularly useful during the injection of clusterbeams into a plasma.