Soft X-ray emissions from neon gas-puff Z-pinch powered by Qiang Guang-I accelerator

Abstract

AbstractThe X-ray emission, especially the K-shell emission, from a neon gas-puff Z-pinch powered by the Qiang Guang-I accelerator, about 1.5 MA in amplitude and 100 ns in rise time, were calculated based on the two-level model and measured with X-ray diodes and an eight-frame X-ray pinhole camera. The simulation results showed that the K-shell yield is highly sensitive to the peak current. The experimental results confirmed that the matching of the Z-pinch load (mass and initial radius) to the current is crucial for getting a higher X-ray yield. Being determined by the imploding time, the pinch current plays a more important role than the current amplitude in K-shell emission. It seems that the preferable imploding time is about 110 ns. The K-shell radiation power with double shells, as a whole, is higher than that using single neon shell. While an implosion of a light (32 µg/cm) and small (20 mm in diameter) neon shell evolves with rather twist and asymmetries, a heavier (41 µg/cm) and bigger (25 mm in diameter) neon shell implodes more symmetrically. The double neon shells, 30 mm and 30 µg/cm for the outer shell, and 15-mm and 10 µg/cm for the inner shell, create almost “perfect” implosions evidenced by the early-time plasma shells with little perturbation and late stagnated pinch liners with a good axial uniformity. It was found that the “Zippering” effect leads to an earlier K-shell emission in the cathode region than that in the anode region, which extends the pulse width of K-shell emission.