Jet formation in low current x-pinch devices

Author

Shipton, E. ; Haas, D. ; Fedin, D. ; Andreev, G. ; Ma, T. ; Wagschal, K. ; Beg, F.N.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. & Aerosp. Eng., California Univ., San Diego, La Jolla, CA

fYear

2006

fDate

4-8 June 2006

Firstpage

33

Lastpage

33

Abstract

Summary form only given. We report on the investigation of the jet formation mechanism in a 80 kA, 40 ns X pinch. Jets in various wire materials (aluminum, copper, molybdenum, nickel, stainless steel and tungsten) were probed with air-wedge interferometric and shadowgraphic techniques with a 3 ns pulse duration laser, and soft X-ray gated imaging (gate duration ~5 ns) with a wavelength <15 Aring. A qualitative difference in properties of the jets was observed as a function of wire material. The jets in tungsten X-pinches were well collimated similar to the observations made with conical wire arrays. Molybdenum and copper X-pinches show merging of the coronal plasma from the wires to the mid-axis of an X-pinch forming a Z-pinch column

Keywords

Z pinch; aluminium; copper; corona; molybdenum; nickel; plasma diagnostics; plasma jets; stainless steel; tungsten; 3 ns; 40 ns; 80 kA; Al; Cu; Mo; Ni; W; X-pinch devices; Z-pinch column; air-wedge interferometry; conical wire arrays; coronal plasma; jet formation; shadowgraphy; soft X-ray gated imaging; Aluminum; Building materials; Copper; Nickel; Optical materials; Optical pulses; Steel; Tungsten; Wire; X-ray lasers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Plasma Science, 2006. ICOPS 2006. IEEE Conference Record - Abstracts. The 33rd IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Traverse City, MI

Print_ISBN

1-4244-0125-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PLASMA.2006.1706905

Filename

1706905