This project is moving into a new phase. Now that we have a working electron gun/polywell setup, it’s time to begin studying the way they interact. To do this, we need a more comprehensive measurement apparatus.
In light of last week’s murky trial results, It’s apparent that a single langmuir probe in the center of our polywell core does not give us a clear picture of the whole well. I think a good first step would be to try to understand how the differs at different distances from the center.
In other words, how is the well different at different points on the red line?
Before I try to answer this question, I want to make sure that each of the six coils behaves in more or less the same way. In other words, I want to make sure If the red line above was pointing in the direction of the left coil instead of the right one, it would made no difference. I’m going to call this a symmetry test, because it will reveal whether or not the well is electromagnetically “symmetrical” about the x, y and z axes.
The symmetry test will work like this: Two more langmuir probes into the core, one on the extreme right of the chamber, and the other at the extreme left.
Right Langmuir
Left Langmuir
If our oscilloscope readings from the two probes are the same, then we may safely assume that the faces are interchangeable.
We’re rapidly running out of feedthrough pins
Core, from the right.
I can’t imagine that the thing’s not symmetrical, because the construction of each coil is identical to that of all others. However, thoroughness never hurt anybody. Also, I’m going to leave the center probe in, so we will be able to compare the center of the well to the edge, which will be interesting in its own right.
Domenick Bauer
Prometheus Fusion Perfection 
Something like a central composite design for the points you measure would be really well suited to building up a response surface for your well. Since you can only fit three probes you’d have to do more than one run (this helps in quantifying your shot-to-shot variation, so it is good to do anyway). Here’s a gist that uses the R AlgDesign package to pick probe locations for a 3, 4 or 5 run experiment; you’d be able to estimate the response at all the faces, and it includes a random effect to account for shot-to-shot variation.
This Will be the next New Thing for the futuer :3
[…] The symmetry test was an experiment we ran to determine if our potential well was symmetrical across its x-axis. It featured three langmuir probes, one in the center, on at the extreme left, and one at the extreme right. more details are in this post. […]