Plasma formation around single wires

At Cornell´s Laboratory of Plasma Studies, single wires of various metals were exploded using a ∼250 ns pulser with a rise time of ∼20 A/ns. It was found that the wires first experience a resistive heating phase that lasts 50–80 ns before a rapid collapse of voltage. From that point on, the voltage across the wire was negligible while the current through the wire continued to increase. We attribute this voltage collapse to the formation of plasma about the wire. Further confirmation of this explanation will be presented along with new experimental data describing preliminary spectroscopy results, the expansion rate of the plasma, and current flow along the wire as a function of radius. The resistance of the wire-electrode connection will be shown to significantly affect the energy deposition. Various diagnostics were used to obtain these experiments. Ultraviolet sensitive vacuum photodiodes and a framing camera with an 8 ns shutter were used to detect and measure the width of the visible light emitted by the plasma. A special wire holder was constructed that allowed the transfer of current from the wire to the surrounding plasma to be observed.