Radiative collapse of a Bennett-relaxed z-pinch

The global evolution of a z-pinch has been studied with the assumption of a relaxed state consisting of ions and electrons, each in a rigidly drifting isothermal Maxwellian distribution. This speculative approach has the pragmatic feature of possessing phenomenologically useful global parameters such as drift velocity and temperature that vary in accordance with global physical quantities such as energy and entropy. The plasma gains energy from a time-dependent electric field by means of Poynting's vector. Coulomb collisions between electrons and ions is calculated with a Fokker-Planck treatment analogous to that used by Dreicer to calculate runaways. For a variety of initial conditions and time-independent applied electric fields, the pinch evolution always culminates in a time-independent (attractor) state whose current is the Pease-Braginskii current and whose final radius is proportional to (line density)/sup 3/4//(electric field)/sup 1/2/. Before the final state is attained, the pinch may bounce toward and away from a highly collapsed state. For the case of a Bennett pinch, the classical limit of the resistivity is attained when the line density is much greater than 4πm/sub e//e2μ/sub o/; i.e., 3.55 /times/ 1014 m/sup /minus/1/. 6 refs., 2 figs