A review of the dense Z-pinch

Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 53 (2011) 093001
Topical Review
Figure 40. Experimental implosion trajectory of a 32 × 4 µm A1 wire array on MAGPIE and
implosion trajectories calculated from a model of snowplough implosion taking into account
the precursor mass distribution for several cases of initial mass in the snowplough piston. The
0D trajectory is also shown. Reprinted with permission from [322, figure 5]. Copyright 2002,
American Institute of Physics.
Figure 41. Side-on laser probing image of a 32 × 4 µm W wire array showing implosion of the
plasma piston onto the precursor plasma column. Reprinted with permission from [322]. Copyright
2002, American Institute of Physics.
implosion commences. Figure 41 is a laser probing snap-shot of an implosion at 93% of the
time to peak x-ray power. This implosion trajectory corresponds to a snowplough as shown by
Lebedev et al [322] in the radially distributed precursor plasma. Thus it is conjectured from
the trajectories and confirmed by Cuneo et al [323] at higher currents that about 40–50% of
the original mass is in the precursor plasma, 10–30% in the piston of the main implosion and
30–40% is left behind as ‘trailing mass’. This trailing mass can be seen in figure 41 as blobs
of density between azimuthally correlated gaps. 3D simulations by Chittenden et al [324]
70