Preliminary Observations of Z-pinch Plasma Formation within a Conducting Coil

We present preliminary experimental results on an attempt to produce a single component X-ray emitting Titanium pinch plasma. The salient features are a thin wall Titanium coil, with similar physical dimensions to capillary loads used in previous experiments. The coil forms the load of a small pulsed power generator, giving a nominal 150 kA in a 120 ns pulse. The coil pitch is chosen so that the inductive impedance is high enough on the time scale of the experiment and so that the current path along the pinch axis is preferred. A laser produced Titanium plasma is injected from the cathode side, and pre-heated by an auxiliary hollow cathode discharge. Filtered and time resolved multi pin-hole images taken in the emitted X-ray plasma radiation show that an axial Titanium plasma column forms during the time scale of the current pulse, which is well detached from the inner wall of the coil