Overview of the Pegasus-II experimental program

Summary form only given. Pegasus-II is a pulsed power facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory which is used to conduct a variety of experiments in the high energy density regime, with applications to the physics of nuclear weapons as well as basic science. The chief mission of the facility is the systematic investigation of hydrodynamic physics issues through the use of a magnetically-driven, cylindrical imploding liner. At 4.3-MJ of stored energy, Pegasus-II is one of the largest capacitor-bank facilities in the world. Peak currents as high as 12 MA have been produced with a quarter-cycle time of 6-8 /spl mu/s. The active portion of the standardized aluminum liner is a 3.2-g right hollow cylinder (4.8-cm outer diameter, 2-cm high, and 0.04-cm wall thickness) designed such that the inner surface of the liner remains at solid aluminum density during the course of the experiment. The run-in time for a typical experiment is /spl sim/10 /spl mu/s. For some experiments, a diagnostic package is placed inside the liner to analyze physical processes associated with multi-microsecond convergent implosions of macroscopic solid shells. These campaigns include the study of instability growth rates, hydrodynamic bounce and mix, and mechanical heating associated with high strain and strain rate. Other experimental studies, in particular those examining the shock production of ejecta and shock-driven hydrodynamic vortex formation and compression, have involved the use of an internal target package.