Study of Triple Ar Gas Puff Z-Pinches on 0.9-MA, 200-ns COBRA

Qi, N.; Rocco, S. V.; Engelbrecht, J.; Lavine, E. S.; de Grouchy, P.; Banasek, J. T.; Atoyan, L.; Byvank, T.; Potter, W. M.; Greenly, J. B.; Hammer, D. A.; Kusse, B. R.; Pikuz, S. A.; Shelkovenko, T. A.; Kroupp, E.; Fisher, A.; Maron, Y.

doi:10.1109/TPS.2018.2873663

Title: Study of Triple Ar Gas Puff Z-Pinches on 0.9-MA, 200-ns COBRA

Journal Article · Mon Oct 22 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/TPS.2018.2873663· OSTI ID:1475190

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^[2]; Engelbrecht, J. ^[3];

^[2]; de Grouchy, P. ^[2];

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^[2]; Potter, W. M. ^[2]; Greenly, J. B. ^[2];

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^[2]; Shelkovenko, T. A. ^[2]; Kroupp, E. ^[4]; Fisher, A. ^[4]; Maron, Y. ^[4]

Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (United States). Lab. of Plasma Studies; L-3 Applied Technologies, Inc., San Leandro, CA (United States)
Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (United States). Lab. of Plasma Studies
Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (United States). Lab. of Plasma Studies; Naval Research Lab. (NRL), Washington, DC (United States). Plasma Physics Division
Weizmann Inst. of Science, Rehovot (Israel)

Ar gas puff z-pinch experiments were conducted on the 0.9 MA, 200 ns COBRA generator at Cornell University. In the experiments, a triple-nozzle gas valve was used to produce the zpinch load with concentric outer and inner gas puffs and a central gas jet. We used Planer Laser Induced Fluorescence (PLIF) to measure the initial gas profile of the load, two 4-frame 4-ns gated XUV cameras to image the imploding plasma, and filtered Photo- Conducting Diamond Detectors (PCDs) to measure the x-ray output. We have observed shock heating and/or photoionization of the dense center jet by the imploding plasma. With an outer to inner plenum pressure ratio of 1:3, de-acceleration of the imploding plasma occurred when the outer plasma shell imploded on the inner shell resulting in a stable implosion. By varying the plenum pressure for the center jet, the x-ray emission was optimized. In conclusion, an Ar K-shell x-ray (3-4 keV) yield of 77±17 J was produced at a current level of 0.87±0.2 MA and an implosion time of 200-ns.

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