Radiative characteristics of a 1-2-3-4 cm double-shell gas puff

Summary form only given. A 1-2-3-4 cm double-shell nozzle was designed and built in 1999 to study long implosion time gas puff Z-pinches. A test program using the same nozzle on all major US accelerators including Double-EAGLE, Saturn, Decade Quad and Z has recently been completed. In this talk, we will present the performance characteristics of this nozzle. Total yield, K-shell yield, power, pulse-width, implosion times will be presented. Pinch characteristics including size and uniformity will be discussed. Pinch ion densities and electron temperatures will be analyzed. Two different techniques to measure the initial gas density profile will be discussed. Optimization experiments to enhance K-shell radiation will be reviewed. Results of a novel spectroscopic technique to trace the source of the radiation will also be illustrated. The yield performance will also be compared to calculations. This comparison is interesting because all test results on Double-EAGLE, Saturn, Decade Quad and Z use the same nozzle with same ratio of inner to outer shell masses, shell geometries, pre-ionization and pinch length. Finally, since the double-shell gas puff allows implosion of two distinct, not mixed, gases with different atomic numbers, results from preliminary experiments with argon and krypton will also be presented.