A Study of the Flow Generated by Ne Gas-Puff Z-Pinch Implosions

Abstract

Imploding Ne gas-puff Z-pinch plasmas produced by the 1 MA peak current, 220 ns rise time COBRA pulser are studied, with the primary focus being the non-thermal component of ion kinetic energy. Close to stagnation time, spectroscopic study of this non-thermal component has shown that turbulence gives a physically sound picture, [1] and assuming turbulent flow yields better fitting results when analyzing Thomson scattering data. [2]