Unstable behavior in wire array discharges and effect of wire shape

Summary form only given, as follows. Z pinches using wire arrays have been investigated to achieve nuclear fusion. The suppression of instabilities in a z-pinch plasma is an extremely important task. If the explosions of the wires in an array do not occur simultaneously and the currents through the wires do not balance, then the current distribution will be nonuniform resulting in an azimuthal Rayleigh-Taylor instability. The inhomogeneous deviation of wire array current is induced by a non-linear increase in resistance of the wire material, e.g., rapid increase in the evaporation, as described in a previous paper. The effect of the wire shape, e.g., scratches on the wires and/or dimensional process error of wires, on the unstable behavior of the discharging current is numerically analyzed. The non-uniformity of wire shape causes the local asynchronous heating and triggers the unstable behavior. It is during the phase change of the wire material to plasma, that the inhomogeneous deviation of the wire array current occurs.