Plasma flow switch for foil-implosion experiments: short-circuit-load experiments at 6 MA

Summary form only given. Plasma-flow-switch (PFS) experiments have been conducted on the 1.5-MJ Pegasus capacitor bank as part of the opening switch development for the Los Alamos Trailmaster program. The goal of this experiment is an inductive-store, opening switch (for use with an explosive-pulsed-power generator) to drive very-high-energy foil implosions and generate soft X-ray pulses of ≳1 MJ. A shot series is underway to (1) optimize the PFS for use on Pegasus in order to study foil-implosion physics issues at drive currents as high as ~10 MA and (2) provide scaling and benchmarking information for the simulations used to design the PFS for explosive generators at much higher energy levels. The first two tests in this series were conducted at ~6 MA using a 216-μF capacitor bank charged to a voltage of 90 kV. Preliminary data indicate that the risetime (10-90%) into a short circuit at the position of the load foil is ~0.6 μs with a time-varying switch inductance of ~3.7 nH