Investigating radiatively driven, magnetised plasmas with a university scale pulsed-power generator

We present first results from a novel experimental platform which is able to access physics relevant to topics including indirect-drive magnetised ICF; laser energy deposition; various topics in atomic physics; and laboratory astrophysics (for example the penetration of B-fields into HED plasmas). T...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2022-03
Main Authors: Halliday, Jack W D, Crilly, Aidan, Chittenden, Jeremy, Mancini, Roberto C, Merlini, Stefano, Rose, Steven, Russell, Danny R, Suttle, Lee G, Valenzuela-Villaseca, Vicente, Bland, Simon N, Lebedev, Sergey V
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ablation
Arrays
Astrophysics
Atomic physics
Brightness temperature
Outflow
Plasmas (physics)
Wire
Zeta pinch
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Summary:We present first results from a novel experimental platform which is able to access physics relevant to topics including indirect-drive magnetised ICF; laser energy deposition; various topics in atomic physics; and laboratory astrophysics (for example the penetration of B-fields into HED plasmas). This platform uses the X-Rays from a wire array Z-Pinch to irradiate a silicon target, producing an outflow of ablated plasma. The ablated plasma expands into ambient, dynamically significant B-fields (~5 T) which are supported by the current flowing through the Z-Pinch. The outflows have a well-defined (quasi-1D) morphology, enabling the study of fundamental processes typically only available in more complex, integrated schemes. Experiments were fielded on the MAGPIE pulsed-power generator (1.4 MA, 240 ns rise time). On this machine a wire array Z-Pinch produces an X-Ray pulse carrying a total energy of ~15 kJ over ~30 ns. This equates to an average brightness temperature of around 10 eV on-target.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2203.11881