Image Analysis of Single Gas Puffs using an XUV Time-Gated Pinhole Camera on a 500 kA, 160 ns Linear Transformer Driver

Gas puff Z-pinches offer a way to achieve high-energy-density plasma conditions and have potential applications for fusion energy research. However, the stability of the pinch is compromised by Magneto Rayleigh Taylor Instabilities (MRTI). To study implosion dynamics and instability growth, single argon and neon gas puff experiments were conducted on CESZAR (Compact Experimental System for Z-pinch and Ablation Research), a 500 kA peak current and 160 ns rise-time Linear Transformer Driver (LTD). The extreme ultraviolet (XUV) time-gated pinhole camera was used to acquire 4 frames of the XUV self-emission of the plasma within a 40-nanosecond window. These images are processed through a Mathworks MatLab script to trace the plasma column and determine the width of the column and instability amplitude [1]. Some data images have superficial features from dust on the hardware that make it impossible to get an accurate outline of the plasma column. Currently, users must manually mask these bright spots with the image editing software Gimp. In our project, we wrote an additional script to automate this process. We performed an error analysis by comparing the plasma trace and radius produced with the former code and our code [2].