Measurement of the radial evolution of a gas-puff Z-pinch by inverse bremstrahlung absorption of He-Ne laser light

Summary form only given, as follows. Streak measurement of the inverse Brumstrahlun absorption of the laser light in a Z-pinch provides information about the stability and temperature evolution of a high density pinch with high time and spatial resolutions. Our experiment uses the UCI staged pinch with peak parameters: 50 kV, 63 kJ, 1.7 msec rise time, and 2 MA maximum current. A 20 mW He-Ne laser (633 nm, single mode) backlights the plasma and a Hamammatsu 1370 streak-camera records the image. A double cylindrical lens collimator before the plasma increases the probe light intensity which is focused to a 1 mm line in the midplane of the pinch. A 10 mm filter and narrow slit placed at the light focus reduces the influence of plasma self-luminosity, these shots were accompanied by a two frame nitrogen laser shadow pictures, (/spl lambda/=337 nm). These images were separated in time by /spl sim/15 ns, with /spl sim/1 ns exposure.