Study of the electrothermal and MHD instabilities in exploding cylindrical foil liner

An experimental and numerical study of the plasma instabilities in an electrical exploding cylindrical Al liner is reported. The Al liner 3 mm in diameter and 10 mu m in thickness is exploded at the Qin-1 facility (450 ns, 400 kA). Various diagnostics, such as multi-frame laser shadowgraphy, an x-ray framing camera, and an x-ray backlighting system are developed. The different imaging systems are sensitive to plasma of different areal densities based on the comparison between the experiments and simulation, which reveal the dynamics of the exploding liner in more detail. The laser shadow images show the low-density plasma (similar to 1-2 x 10(-4) g cm(-2)) at the edge of the liner, and both the amplitude and wavelength of the plasma instabilities increase over time, which are considered to be magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities rather than electrothermal instabilities. During the ablation of the liner, quasi-periodic azimuthally correlated striations are directly observed in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) self-emission images. Meanwhile, the vertical filaments, which are electrothermal instabilities for plasma under the condition of partial differential eta/ partial differential T < 0, are also observed in EUV self-emission images. The x-ray backlighting images of the exploding liner are obtained by placing an X-pinch load on the current-return path to serve as an x-ray point source (similar to 1 ns, similar to 10 mu m). The x-ray backlighting results show the behavior of the high-density plasma (similar to 1.89 x 10(-3) g cm(-2)), which includes the transition from electrothermal to MHD instabilities. Finally, we realized a 2D MHD simulation of the exploding liner under experimental conditions, which shows good agreement with the results of the experimental perturbation.

Automated summary

This study reports on an experimental and numerical investigation of plasma instabilities in an electrically exploding cylindrical aluminum liner. Various diagnostic tools were used, revealing different plasma areal densities and dynamics. The results suggest the presence of magnetohydrodynamic instabilities rather than electrothermal instabilities in the exploding liner.