New Staged Z-Pinch Experiments on the Mega-Ampere Current Driver Zebra*

Abstract

We report results from the latest staged Z-pinch experiments conducted on the 1MA Z-pinch Zebra facility at the University of Nevada, Reno. In these experiments a hollow shell of Krypton gas liner is injected through a supersonic nozzle (ID=2.0 cm), with a throat gap of 240 microns. The width of the anodecathode gap is 1 cm. The liner compresses a deuterium target plasma injected through a plasma gun with copper-tungsten walls. Axial magnetic field in the 1–2kG range, applied across the pinch region, stabilizes the Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities.