Plasma guns feel the pinch

Z-pinch Discharge in Laser Produced Plasma

Z-pinch effects in a laser produced aluminium plasma were investigated with a relatively low current fast coaxial electrical discharge. The ion flux in the laser produced plasma (LPP) was monitored with a Langmuir ion probe and the line density was controlled by using an aperture to select the portion of the LPP which enters the discharge cell. The Zpinch dynamics were recorded using time-resol...

Modeling the Parker instability in a rotating plasma screw pinch

Dynamo-free plasma in the reversed-field pinch: Advances in understanding the reversed-field pinch improved confinement mode

J. K. Anderson, J. Adney, A. Almagri, A. Blair, D. L. Brower, M. Cengher, B. E. Chapman, S. Choi, D. Craig, D. R. Demers, D. J. Den Hartog, B. Deng, W. X. Ding, F. Ebrahimi, D. Ennis, G. Fiksel, C. B. Forest, P. Franz, J. Goetz, R. W. Harvey, D. Holly, B. Hudson, M. Kaufman, T. Lovell, L. Marrelli, P. Martin, K. McCollam, V. V. Mirnov, P. Nonn, R. O’Connell, S. Oliva, P. Piovesan, S. C. Prager,...

Laboratory Modeling of Meteorite Impact Craters by Z-pinch Plasma

Desai, et al. [1] simulated microparticle lunar impact craters using laser impacts. They produced crater diameters of several hundred μm in Al. Ford [2] made observations about lunar craters simulated by spark-machining on metal. These were also very small scale craters. This work expands the size of simulated impact craters from their sub-millimeter craters to craters over a centimeter and exp...

Numerical experiments on plasma focus pinch current limitation

Contrary to the general expectation that performance of a plasma focus would progressively improve with progressive reduction of its static inductance Lo, a recent paper suggests that there is in fact an optimum Lo below which although the peak total current increases progressively the pinch current and consequently the neutron yield of that plasma focus would not increase, but instead decrease...