High Current Wire Array and Gas Puff Implosions on the Z Accelerator to Produce Intense K-Shell X-Ray Emissions

Over the last several years, the Z Accelerator has been engaged in research on near-Planckian x-ray sources for inertial confinement fusion and on K-shell emitting sources for radiation-material interaction studies. These radiating z pinches exhibit complex dynamics that have been, and continue to be, studied over a wide range of configurations. In this paper, the progress to date for the production of tens to hundreds of kilojoules of K-shell emission from 8 keV to 3 keV will be presented. Nested wire arrays and multi-shell gas puffs have been employed to help mitigate implosion instabilities and asymmetries to produce x-ray powers of tens of terawatts with emitted x-ray risetimes of a few nanoseconds. Spectroscopy and modeling of these pinches are providing insight into the role of temperature and density gradients and other plasma phenomena in the production of the radiation. Future directions will also be discussed.