Twl. Sanford et al., TIME-DEPENDENT ELECTRON-TEMPERATURE DIAGNOSTICS FOR HIGH-POWER, ALUMINUM Z-PINCH PLASMAS, Review of scientific instruments, 68(1), 1997, pp. 852-857
Time-resolved x-ray pinhole photographs and time-integrated radially r
esolved x-ray crystal-spectrometer measurements of azimuthally symmetr
ic aluminum-wire implosions suggest that the densest phase of the pinc
h is composed of a hot plasma core surrounded by a cooler plasma halo.
The slope of the free-bound x-ray continuum, provides a time-resolved
, model-independent diagnostic of the core electron temperature. A sim
ultaneous measurement of the time-resolved K-shell line spectra provid
es the electron temperature of the spatially averaged plasma. Together
, the two diagnostics support a one-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic
model prediction of a plasma whose thermalization on axis produces st
eep radial gradients in temperature, from temperatures in excess of 1
kV in the core to below 1 kV in the surrounding plasma halo. (C) 1997
American Institute of Physics.