Increase in Power of Radiation and Specific Concentration of Energy of Plasma of the High-Current Z-Pinches due to Compression of the Cascade Wire Arrays Interacting via Magnetic Field

Abstract

Experiments on compression of cascade tungsten wire arrays with reduced inductance at the final stage of pinching aimed at increasing the specific concentration of plasma energy of the high-current Z‑pinches were carried out. The experiments were conducted at the Angara-5-1 facility at load current of up to 4 MA. The highest radiation power per unit pinch length were obtained using the cascade wire arrays in which mass per unit length of the inner wire array with reduced inductance was in the range between 1 and 1.5 that of the outer wire array. The soft X-ray radiation power of P ~ 11 TW was obtained from the 1-cm-long pinch. The specific yield of the soft X-ray radiation was in the range of 130–140 kJ/cm. The total and specific powers of the pinch radiation obtained upon compression of the cascade load with reduced inductance exceeded the total and specific powers of the pinch radiation obtained by compression of a “standard” wire array with a length of 1.6 cm with the same parameters (7–8 TW and 5 TW/cm, respectively). The yield of the soft X-ray radiation did not change upon reduction in the length of the emitting pinch from 1.6 to 0.6 cm. The compression dynamics of such a load is indicative of an increased role played by the magnetic field of the current flowing in the inner cascade in interaction of the cascades. A variant of using interaction of the cascade-array shells via the magnetic field of the inner-cascade current as applied to the scheme of the statistical “hohlraum” with indirect irradiation of spherical targets is proposed. The scheme enables entrainment of part of the current by the inner wire array that confines the statistical “hohlraum.” In this case, interaction of cascades allows using nearly entire kinetic energy of the accelerated outer shell for generation of radiation in the statistical “hohlraum” by two forming near-electrode pinches.