Tungsten wire-array Z-pinch experiments at 200 TW and 2 MJ

Here Z, a 60 TW/5 MJ electrical accelerator located at Sandia National Laboratories, has been used to implode tungsten wire-array Z pinches. These arrays consisted of large numbers of tungsten wires (120–300) with wire diameters of 7.5 to 15 μm placed in a symmetric cylindrical array. The experiment...

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Published in:Physics of plasmas 1998-05, Vol.5 (5), p.2105-2111
Main Authors: Spielman, R. B., Deeney, C., Chandler, G. A., Douglas, M. R., Fehl, D. L., Matzen, M. K., McDaniel, D. H., Nash, T. J., Porter, J. L., Sanford, T. W. L., Seamen, J. F., Stygar, W. A., Struve, K. W., Breeze, S. P., McGurn, J. S., Torres, J. A., Zagar, D. M., Gilliland, T. L., Jobe, D. O., McKenney, J. L., Mock, R. C., Vargas, M., Wagoner, T., Peterson, D. L.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Here Z, a 60 TW/5 MJ electrical accelerator located at Sandia National Laboratories, has been used to implode tungsten wire-array Z pinches. These arrays consisted of large numbers of tungsten wires (120–300) with wire diameters of 7.5 to 15 μm placed in a symmetric cylindrical array. The experiments used array diameters ranging from 1.75 to 4 cm and lengths from 1 to 2 cm. A 2 cm long, 4 cm diam tungsten array consisting of 240, 7.5 μm diam wires (4.1 mg mass) achieved an x-ray power of ∼200  TW and an x-ray energy of nearly 2 MJ. Spectral data suggest an optically thick, Planckian-like radiator below 1000 eV. One surprising experimental result was the observation that the total radiated x-ray energies and x-ray powers were nearly independent of pinch length. These data are compared with two-dimensional radiation magnetohydrodynamic code calculations.
ISSN:1070-664X
1089-7674
DOI:10.1063/1.872881