A Two Step Plasma Conditioning Scheme for High Current Plasma Implosions

We consider the effect of using a limited energy current pre-pulse to first heat and evaporate a solid material in wire or cylindrical foil geometry, and second to allow the material to expand until a suitable characteristic scale dimension, like the skin depth, before the application of the main high current pulse for compression and heating. In this way, due to the large-scale density distribution formed during plasma expansion in the preparation phase, the short-wavelength instabilities may be suppressed. This idea is confirmed by 2-D RMHD simulations of the implosion of plasma from exploding a 13.6μm diameter tungsten wire evaporated with a low-energy pre-pulse, free expansion of the wire plasma until a necessary radius and subsequent implosion by a main pulse. The higher resistance against short-wavelength instabilities results in a better quality compression and a higher energy density plasma structure. For implosion of a thin foil liner, the idea of two step implosion is considered by comparison of 2-D RMHD simulations of the implosion of a 1.5μm copper foil at 18MA current amplitude in two cases: with and without pre-pulse. The fastest short-wavelength RT modes associated with high aspect ratio are suppressed due to a finite density gradient at the main pulse. The criteria for the optimum pre-pulse are examined to improve the radiation characteristics for given pulsed power conditions