Z pinches as intense X-ray sources for inertial confinement fusion applications

Fast z-pinch implosions can convert more than 10% of the stored electrical energy in a pulsed-power accelerator into X-rays. On the Saturn pulsed-power accelerator at Sandia National Laboratories, currents of 6–8 MA with a risetime of less than 50 ns have been used to drive cylindrically-symmetric arrays of wires, producing X-ray energies greater than 400 kJ with X-ray pulsewidths less than 5 ns and peak X-ray powers of 75±10 TW. Using similar loads, PBFA Z has produced >1.5 MJ and >150 TW of X-rays in the first 4 months of operation in the z-pinch mode. These X-ray energies and powers are records for laboratory X-ray production. The X-ray output can be thermalized into a near-Planckian X-ray source by containing it within a cylindrical radiation case (a hohlraum). These energetic, intense, large volume, long-lived hohlraum X-ray sources have recently been used for ICF-relevant ablator physics experiments and offer the potential for performing many new basic physics and fusion-relevant experiments.