Morphology of the Expansion of an Exploding-Wire Plasma

Abstract

In this paper, a qualitative description of plasma morphology at its later stages of life, when the plasma is created by an exploding wire system, is presented. Also, measurements of the optical penetration depth for metallic copper gas, surrounding the plasma as its early times, were performed. The main objective was to estimate how this phenomenon could affect the optical measurements of the plasma morphology. Independence of the optical depth for the metallic copper gas from initial energy of the experiment and a strong dependence of final plasma morphology from the same parameter have been established.