Study of the effect of current rise time on the formation of the precursor column in cylindrical wire array Z pinches at 1 MA

The limited understanding of the mechanisms driving the mass ablation rate of cylindrical wires arrays is presently one of the major limitations in predicting array performance at the higher current levels required for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) ignition. Continued investigation of this phenomenon is crucial to realize the considerable potential for wire arrays to drive both ICF and inertial fusion energy, by enabling a predictive capability in computational modeling. We present the first study to directly compare the mass ablation rates of wire arrays as a function of the current rise rate. Formation of the precursor column is investigated on both the MAPGIE (1 MA, 250ns [Mitchell et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 67, 1533 (1996)]) and COBRA (1 MA, 100ns [Greenly et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 79, 073501 (2008)]) generators, and results are used to infer the change in the effective ablation velocity induced by the rise rate of the drive current. Laser shadowography, gated extreme ultraviolet (XUV) imaging, and x-ray diodes are used to compare the dynamical behavior on the two generators, and X-pinch radiography and XUV spectroscopy provide density evolution and temperature measurements respectively. Results are compared to predictions from an analytical scaling model developed previously from MAGPIE data, based on a fixed ablation velocity. For COBRA the column formation time occurs at 116±5 ns and for Al arrays and 146±5 ns for W arrays, with Al column temperature in the range of 70-165 eV. These values lie close to model predictions, inferring only a small change in the ablation velocity is induced by the factor of 2.5 change in current rise time. Estimations suggest the effective ablation velocities for MAGPIE and COBRA experiments vary by a maximum of 30%.