Magneto-rayleigh-taylor instabilities on thin foils driven by a 1-MA LTD

Summary form only given. While not widely used, thin foils as Z-pinch loads may soon become necessary to achieve the required mass for higher current-driven X-ray sources, and they may also offer useful options for X-ray pulse shaping (T.J. Nash et.al., 2004). This paper reports our latest design and experimental progress on the study of the dominant instability, the magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor instability (MRTI). Planar Al foils as thin as 400 nm thick driven by the 1-MA linear transformer driver (LTD), MAIZE, at the University of Michigan, are used as the dynamic load targets for this investigation. For a LTD in the 1 MA, 100 ns risetime regime, MRTI growth may exhibit ~5 e-foldings for observation with a laser backlighter. Inductance considerations for the magnetically-insulated transmission line, a planar foil load design, laser schlieren and interferometry diagnostics, and experimental progress will be presented along with MRTI theory.