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Updated: Mar 29, 2026
Investigation of Early Plasma Evolution Induced by Ultrashort Laser Pulses
Published on: July 2, 2012
Technique for fabrication of ultrathin foils in cylindrical geometry for liner-plasma implosion experiments with
D A Yager-Elorriaga1, A M Steiner1, S G Patel1
1Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2104, USA.
Abstract:
In this work, we describe a technique for fabricating ultrathin foils in cylindrical geometry for liner-plasma implosion experiments using sub-MA currents. Liners are formed by wrapping a 400 nm, rectangular strip of aluminum foil around a dumbbell-shaped support structure with a non-conducting center rod, so that the liner dimensions are 1 cm in height, 6.55 mm in diameter, and 400 nm in thickness. The liner-plasmas are imploded by discharging ∼600 kA with ∼200 ns rise time using a 1 MA linear transformer driver, and the resulting implosions are imaged four times per shot using laser-shadowgraphy at 532 nm. This technique enables the study of plasma implosion physics, including the magneto Rayleigh-Taylor, sausage, and kink instabilities on initially solid, imploding metallic liners with university-scale pulsed power machines.
