Production of uniform dense titanium plasmas for experiments on Atlas

Summary form only given, as follows. Atlas is a large pulsed power machine being built at Los Alamos for the purpose of doing basic physics and hydrodynamic experiments for the stockpile stewardship program. One class of the basic physics experiments involves studying the properties and behavior of plasmas at very high density. These experiments typically involve the production of a high density plasma to be imploded by the solid liners driven by the Atlas machine. The requirements for these high density "target" plasmas are that they be uniform in density and temperature, have ion densities /spl sim/0.1 x solid density, and temperatures of a few eV. The production of such plasmas has not been demonstrated; therefore, we have initiated an experimental program to learn to do this. We are conducting a series of experiments on the Colt capacitor bank at Los Alamos. These experiments use a novel configuration to heat a titanium foil to plasma conditions using the current from Colt, but without imploding the plasma. We present preliminary density profiles of the titanium plasma using X-ray radiography along with magnetic probe data showing the current distribution in the machine. Measurements of the electrical resistivity of titanium under these conditions is also presented.