Experiment with a small gas-puff z-pinch plasma device

Abstract

Summary form only given. A small gas-puff Z-pinch plasma device is composed of a capacitor energy storage bank (capacitance=16.3 /spl mu/F, charging voltage=23 kV), field distortion switches, a discharge chamber, vacuum pumping system, fast operation gas valve and diagnostics. The amplitude and the period of discharge current are 230 kA and 9.6 /spl mu/s, respectively. Firstly, a hollow gas shell is produced by injecting gas through an annular nozzle from the fast operation valve. Then initiating the switches, a high pulsed current flows through the gas shell to produce a plasma and form hot pinch spots, from which intense X-rays and ion beams are emitted. A compact Thomson ion energy analyzer is installed inside the gas-puff Z-pinch device. By using the analyzer, up to five clear parabolas produced by argon ion bombardment on CR-39 plastic target have been observed. The parabolas are formed by Ar/sup +/, Ar/sup 2+/, Ar/sup 3+/, Ar/sup 4+/ and Ar/sup 5+/ ions. In our experiments, the range of the energy of Ar/sup +/, Ar/sup 2+/ and Ar/sup 3+/ ions are below 400 keV, 700 keV and 1 MeV, respectively.