Modeling shell-on-cylinder implosions on the Z and ZR pulsed-power generators

Summary form only given. Rapid heating is required to ionize moderate atomic number plasmas into the K-shell. When a plasma shell is imploded, this heating occurs when the implosion kinetic energy is thermalized. However, if a plasma shell is imploded onto a plasma cylinder, rapid heating of the cylinder occurs by strong shock wave generation and compressive heating. In this talk, we investigate two kinds of shell-on-cylinder implosions. In one case, an Al plasma is imploded onto an Fe plasma. In a second case, Fe-on-Fe implosions are investigated to benchmark the calculations to some stainless steel data that was obtained in nested wire array experiments conducted on the Z accelerator at Sandia National Laboratories. The replacement of iron by an equal mass of Al plasma in the imploding shell should have a small impact on the heating of and X-ray emissions from the inner Fe core plasma, but it adds the possibility of generating kilovolt emissions from the imploding Al. In the Al-on-Fe calculations, we first determine the implosion kinetic energies that are needed to maximize the production of Fe K-shell emission, and then evaluate the capability of the Z and ZR generators to meet these requirements. How L-shell emissions impact the ionization dynamics of Fe is investigated along with the problem of optimizing the collateral production of super-kilovolt X-rays from the K-shell of Al.