Experimental investigation of the effects of an axial magnetic field on the magneto Rayleigh-Taylor, sausage and kink instabilities in imploding liner-plasmas

Abstract

Experiments are underway to study the stabilizing effects of an axial magnetic field on the magneto Rayleigh-Taylor (MRT), sausage, and kink instabilities in imploding liner-plasmas at the Michigan Accelerator for Inductive Z-pinch Experiments (MAIZE) facility at the University of Michigan (UM). The liners were fabricated from ultrathin aluminum foils and had thicknesses of 400 nm and 6.55 mm diameters, and were imploded by discharging a current of 600 kA using a 1-MA Linear Transformer Driver1. An independently triggered capacitor bank was used to drive a set of Helmholtz coils in order to generate axial magnetic fields of up to 5 T. The imploding plasma was imaged using a 12-frame laser imaging system, which captured both shadowgraphs and self-emission over a 120–180 ns period. Varying the external magnetic field enabled a controlled study of the stabilizing effects of axial magnetic fields on instability growth in imploding plasmas.