Improved dynamics and radiated powers from titanium Z-pinch implosions by employing nested wire arrays

Summary form only given, as follows. Recent experiments on the 20-MA Z accelerator at SNL using nested, nickel-clad titanium wire arrays measured titanium K-shell (4800 eV) powers up to 15 TW, a 50% improvement over previous titanium measurements. Outer wire load diameters varied from 40 mm to 60 mm, with the inner arrays always being half the mass at half the initial diameter of the outer array. The nested wire arrays showed substantial improvements in Ti K-shell power over single Ti wire arrays, with faster risetimes (3 vs 5.5 ns) and narrower pulses (4 vs 7 ns). This power increase corresponded with the production of tighter pinches, i.c. 2 mm diameters versus 3 mm with single arrays. In addition, the efficiency of producing Ti K-shell emissions during the first pulse is seen to increase with increased implosion velocities when nested configurations are used. In this paper, comparisons will be made with previous, single array Ti experiments, and with one and two dimensional radiation-magneto-hydrodynamic calculations.