Wire number effects in multiple-wire Z-pinches

Summary form only given. One of the more intriguing phenomena relating to multiple wire Z-pinches is the experimentally observed strong dependence of the radiation pulse duration on the number of wires, N, over a range from about 10 to 300 wires. Much of our insight into wire array implosions has come from simulations with two dimensional MHD codes. To reproduce the experimental results with these calculations, an initial noise amplitude must be judiciously chosen. As the wire number increases, smaller amplitude initial perturbations are needed in order to match the narrower pulses. Although this modeling has been quite successful, it has been criticized for the lack of a physical interpretation for the initial perturbations. We have recently developed a simple, but fundamentally three dimensional, analytic theory which appears to explain the behavior.