Z-pinch characteristics of the Tandem Puff

The Tandem Puff uses a coaxial gun geometry based on the dense plasma focus but without a breach insulator to generate a fast Z-pinch. Operating in vacuum the Tandem Puff uses ionized plasma from flashboards along the coaxial section to provide the initial current path in the breach and to support the axial snowplow phase of operation. The gas imploded in the fast Z-pinch phase at the end of the inner electrode is injected by a magnetically driven fast valve. The authors report experiments characterizing the Tandem Puff using neon as the working gas have been performed using ACE, a 250 kJ, 120 kV capacitor bank. With a quarter period of about 3 μs, operation of the bank at 100 kV resulted in peak drive current approaching 1.5 MA. The Z-pinch was characterized by a number of diagnostics including filtered calorimeters and XRD's, a soft pinhole camera, a spectrometer, an Imacon 790 camera used in both streak and framing mode, and current monitors