UCI staged z-pinch

The UCI Staged z-Pinch is being assembled to study laboratory-scale, inertial-confinement fusion. The pinch load consists of an imploding-liner plasma that collapses onto a coaxial-fiber target. The fiber would be solid deuterium, cryogenically extruded through a 100-/spl mu/m diameter orifice. Initially, current flows through the outer liner. Near peak compression of the liner induces a current on the fiber with a time scale of the order of nanoseconds. Such rapid transfer of energy leads to an impressive increase in the fiber-internal energy, attaining conditions favorable for thermonuclear ignition. On the basis of simple flux compression our theoretical analysis and modeling suggests that fusion break-even is possible at several MA current (Rahman, Wessel, and Rostoker, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, p.714, 1995), The experimental facility for this study is presently being commissioned at UCI. It consists of a low-inductance bank with the following design parameters: 50 /spl mu/Fd, 50 kV, 62.5 kJ, 1.9 /spl mu/sec risetime, and 2 MA into a short-circuit load.