Axial diagnostic package for Z

We have developed and fielded an axial diagnostic package for the 20 MA, 10 0 ns, z- pinch driver Z. The package is used to diagnose dynamic hohlraum e xperiments which require an axial line of sight. The heart of the package i s a reentrant cone originally used to diagnose ion-beam-driven hohlraums on PBFA-II. It has one diagnostic line of sight at 0 degrees, two at 4 degree s, four at 6 degrees, and four at 9 degrees. In addition it has a number of viewing, alignment, and vacuum feedthrough ports. The front of the package sits approximately 1.5 m from the pinch. This allows much closer proximity to the pinch, with inherently better resolution and signal, than is presen tly possible in viewing the pinch from the side. Debris that is preferentia lly directed along the axis is mitigated by two apertures for each line of sight, and by fast valves and imaging pinholes or cross slits for each diag nostic. In the initial run with this package we fielded a time-resolved pin hole camera, a five-channel pinhole-apertured x-ray diode array, a bolomete r, a spatially resolved time-integrated crystal spectrometer, and a spatial ly and temporally resolved crystal spectrometer. We will present data obtai ned from these diagnostics in the dynamic hohlraum research conducted on Z. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0034-6748(99)54801-6].