Experimental study on imploding characteristics of wire-array Z pinches on Qiangguang-1 facility

To investigate the imploding characteristics of cylindrical wirearray, experiments with load current varying from 1.5,MA to 1.7,MAwere carried out on the Qiangguang-1 facility. The complicatedtemporal-spatial distribution of x-ray radiation was measured by theone-dimensional (1D) x-ray imaging system. Other diagnosticequipments including the x-ray power meter (XRPM) and thetime-integrated pinhole camera were used to record time-resolvedx-ray power pulse and pinhole x-ray images. Analysis shows that thefast leading edge of the local x-ray radiation pulse is of primaryimportance in sharpening x-ray power pulse rather than the temporalsynchrony and the spatial uniformity of implosion. Experimentalresults indicated that the better axial imploding synchrony, thefaster the increase of x-ray power for an array consisting of 32tungsten wires of 5mum diameter than for the others, and thehigher the x-ray radiation power with maximal convergence ratio(r_0/r_1) of 10.5. A `zipper-like' effect of x-ray radiationextending from the anode to the cathode was also observed.