Switching and scaling behavior of an exploding mercury jet

The feasibility of using an exploding mercury jet as a high current opening switch has been evaluated at peak currents ranging from 7 kA to 125 kA. To provide a more realistic measure of actual performance, a spark gap was used to switch peak currents into varying RL loads. The roles of magnetic pinching, ionization, and skin effects in determination of scaling behavior and reproducibility are discussed for the range of currents studied. Supporting evidence for the roles of pinching and ionization in scaling is provided by spatially and temporally resolved spectra, which have been used to estimate the ion/neutral temperature and electron temperature in the plasma column formed by the exploding jet.