X-ray backlighting of wire expansion and plasma merging of z-pinch load with 10-40kA/wire

It is well known that the evolution of wire array z-pinch load can be divided into several phases: wire explosion, inter-wire plasma merging, implosion and stagnation. In this paper, experiments with x-pinch backlighter to study the initial wire explosion and inter-wire plasma merging were performed on the pulsed power generator PPG-I at Tsinghua University. An x-pinch (13-25μm Mo and 5-18μm Wu wires) used as soft x-ray source was installed in the centre between the output main electrodes of PPG-I generator, and the object z-pinch load was installed in one of the return current posts. The object z-pinch load consists of 2-4 tungsten wires of 5-18 μm diameter, 12 mm long, and 2 mm spacing between wires. The evolution images of wire explosion and inter-wire plasma merging were recorded with high resolution x-ray film, which was covered with a mass step-wedge filter to calibrate the mass density distribution of wire explosion and inter-wire merging plasma. Based on extensive discharge tests, the time sequence of backlighting images of z-pinches was obtained. In the paper, we also discussed how to determine the interface between high-density wire core and low-density surrounding plasma, and then presented the expansion rates of high density wire core and the mass density distribution of inter-wire plasma under different z-pinch current.