Final Report: Radiation-magnetohydrodynamic evolution and instability of conductors driven by megagauss magnetic fields

Abstract

We are pleased to report important progress in experimentally characterizing and numerically modeling the transformation into plasma of walls subjected to pulsed megagauss magnetic fields. Understanding this is important to Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) because an important limitation to the metal liner approach to MTF comes from the strong eddy current heating on the surface of the metal liner. This has intriguing non-linear aspects when the magnetic field is in the megagauss regime as needed for MTF, and may limit the magnetic field in an MTF implosion. Many faculty, students, and staff have contributed to this work, and, implicitly or explicitly, to this report. Contributors include, in addition to the PIs, Andrey Esaulov, Stephan Fuelling, Irvin Lindemuth, Volodymyr Makhin, Ioana Paraschiv, Milena Angelova, Tom Awe, Tasha Goodrich, Arunkumar Prasadam, Andrew Oxner, Bruno Le Galloudec, Radu Presura, and Vladimir Ivanov. Highlights of the progress made during the grant include: • 12 articles published, and 44 conference and workshop presentations made, on a broad range of issues related to this project; • An ongoing experiment that uses the 1 MA, 100-ns Zebra z-pinch at UNR to apply 2 5 megagauss to a variety of metal surfaces, examining plasma formation and evolution; •more » Numerical simulation studies of the 1-MA Zebra, and potential Shiva Star and Atlas experiments that include realistic equations of state and radiation effects, using a variety of tables. • Collaboration with other groups doing simulations of this experiment at LANL, VNIIEF, SNL, and NumerEx leading to a successful international workshop at UNR in the spring of 2008.« less