SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL EVOLUTION OF HIGH-ENERGY DENSITY PLASMAS IN THE COMPOSITE PINCH ON GIT-4 GENERATOR

A series of collaborative experiments on complex plasma loads has been carried out on the large inductive energy storage generator GIT-4, Th e aim of the experiments is to explore the different configurations fo r the formation of ultrahigh-energy density plasmas in high-voltage pu lsed-power systems by direct electromagnetic energy coupling. In this paper, we present some of the underlying philosophy on these experimen ts and the results obtained, Particular emphasis is placed on the puls ed-power aspects and the effect of source-load coupling for the differ ent studied Z-pinch loads. Resulting radiative properties of the class ical exploding wire and liner are experimentally compared with those o f the composite pinch scheme in which an intermediate low-density shel l is used for staged energy transfer onto a micron-sized wire.