A study of Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth in wire array Z-pinch experiments

Summary form only given, as follows. Wire array Z-pinches are extremely efficient sources of high power soft X-ray pulses (up to 280 TW) for energising hohlraums for inertial confinement fusion and other high energy density physics applications. The main process affecting quality of the implosion and X-ray power at stagnation is development of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability in a plasma accelerated by the magnetic pressure. In this paper we present experimental results on Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth in wire array Z-pinches driven by a 1.4 MA, 240 ns current pulse. Al, W and Ti wire arrays of 16 mm diameter with between 8 and 64 wires were studied. Comparison of the instability development for different wire materials and wire number will be presented. The radial structure of the instability was observed by laser probing and soft X-ray imaging in implosions of arrays consisting of four groups of four closely spaced wires (4/spl times/4 wire array). Experiments to study the instability development in nested-wire arrays and effect of the B/sub z/ magnetic field induced by wires twisting will be presented.