Study of hydrodynamic instabilities of a Z pinch during a high-current explosion of a thin wire

The results of laboratory and numerical experiments on studying the core effect and associated hydrodynamic instabilities on the high-current plasma compression of the exploding metallic wires are presented. The studies on the discharge structure were accomplished through the method of the multi-frame X-ray shadow photography with high-time and spatial resolution (< 1 ns and 1 μm). The implosion process was modeled through the free-points method by the two-dimensional MHD-program of the dense Z-pinch; the development of the corona-core instabilities was calculated additionally by the two-dimensional NUTCY code. The study showed, that the hydrodynamic processes in the core are the basic cause of formation of the observed miniature areas of bright luminescence in the X-ray range