Study of plasma parameter's distribution upon electrical wire explosion

Experimental results on electrical explosion of wires in vacuum with current density j similar to 10(12) A/m(2), current rise rate (dI/dt) similar to 50 A/ns and current pulse with amplitude similar to 10 kA are presented. The structure of the discharge channels in vacuum has been studied using laser shadow and schlieren imaging with 7 ns frames, UV pinhole images with 5 ns frames and X pinch X-ray backlighting. The information on the dense core material and the conducting plasma distributions was obtained in our experiments by analyzing and comparing the results obtained from all diagnostics.