THE DYNAMICS OF VORTEX STRUCTURES AND STATES OF CURRENT IN PLASMA-LIKE FLUIDS AND THE ELECTRICAL EXPLOSION OF CONDUCTORS .3. COMPARISON WITH EXPERIMENT

This paper is the concluding paper in a series of three. On the basis of the results of the first two, the experiments on the electric explo sion in conductors are discussed and the mechanism of 'hot' plasma spo t formation, which was observed repeatedly in the experiments on plasm a focus, z-pinches, vacuum sparks and electric explosion of microwires , has been proposed. To realize this mechanism, the formation of sausa ge-type instabilities is not necessary. Moreover, the possibility of t he formation of hot spots in a liquid metal (in the model under discus sion, the plasma-like medium is assumed to be incompressible with cons tant local kinetic transport coefficients) has been shown. The latter is of great interest for understanding the mechanism of initiation and operation of vacuum arc cathode spots and also for the explanation of the phenomenon of explosive electron emission, which is widely employ ed in applied physics.