Radiative properties of high wire number tungsten arrays with implosion times up to 250 ns
- Sandia National Laboratories, P.O. Box 5800, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185 (United States)
- Plasma Physics Group, Imperial College London, SW7 2BZ (United Kingdom)
High wire number, 25-mm-diameter tungsten wire arrays have been imploded on the 8-MA Saturn generator [R. B. Spielman {ital et al.}, AIP Conference Proceeding 195, 3 (American Institute of Physics, Woodbury, NY 1989)], operating in a long-pulse mode. By varying the mass of the arrays from 710 to 6140 {mu}g/cm, implosion times of 130{endash}250 ns have been obtained with implosion velocities of 50{endash}25 cm/{mu}s, respectively. These {ital Z}-pinch implosions produced plasmas with millimeter diameters that radiated 600{endash}800 kJ of x-rays, with powers of 20{endash}49 TW; the corresponding pulsewidths were 19{endash}7.5 ns, with risetimes ranging from 6.5 to 4.0 ns. These powers and pulsewidths are similar to those achieved with 50-ns implosion times on Saturn. Two-dimensional, radiation-magnetohydrodynamic calculations indicate that the imploding shells in these long implosion time experiments are comparable in width to those in the short-pulse cases. This can be due to lower initial perturbations. A heuristic wire array model suggests that the reduced perturbations, in the long-pulse cases, may be due to the individual wire merger occurring well before the acceleration of the shell. The experiments and modeling suggest that 150{endash}200 ns implosion time {ital Z}-pinches could be employed for high-power, x-ray source applications. {copyright} {ital 1999 American Institute of Physics.}
- OSTI ID:
- 362682
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Journal Name: Physics of Plasmas Journal Issue: 9 Vol. 6; ISSN PHPAEN; ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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