Z-pinch diagnostics, plasma and liner instabilities and new x-ray techniques

Pulse power experiments of the last several decades have contributed greatly to the understanding of high temperature and high density plasmas and, more recently, to the study of hydrodynamic effects in thick imploding cylinders. Common to all these experiments is the application of a large current pulse to a cylindrically symmetric load, with the resulting Lorenz force compressing the load to produce hydrodynamic motion and/or high temperature, high density plasma. In Los Alamos, Pulsed power experiments are carried out at two facilities. Experiments at low current (from several million to ten million Amperes) are conducted on the Pegasus II capacitor bank. Experiments with higher currents (10`s to 100`s MA range) are performed in Ancho Canyon with the explosively driven Procyon and MAGO magnetic flux compression generator systems. In this paper, the authors present a survey of diagnostic capabilities and results from several sets of experiments. First, they discuss the initiation and growth of instabilities in plasmas generated from the implosion of hollow z-pinches in the pegasus and Procyon experiments. Next they discuss spectroscopic data from the plasmas produced by the MAGO system. They also show time resolved imaging data from thick ({approximately} .4 mm) liner implosions. Finally, the authors discuss improvements to x-ray and visible light imaging and spectrographic diagnostic techniques. The emphasis of this paper is not so much a detailed discussion of the experiments, but a presentation of imaging and spectroscopic results and the implications of these observations to the experiments.