Dynamics of single and double argon gas puff Z-pinches on the CESZAR fast 500-kA Linear Transformer Driver

Gas puff Z-pinches¹ are a well-established X-ray source and hold significant potential for thermonuclear fusion. Implosions on fast drivers, like CESZAR (500kA in 160ns) are susceptible to the Magneto Rayleigh-Taylor Instability (MRTI) limiting their utility in applications. We report on a systematic investigation of the snowplow stabilization² method for mitigating MRTI growth by studying the dynamics of double and single gas puff loads. We compared instability growth in argon liner on argon target, argon liner on deuterium target and hollow argon gas puffs on the CESZAR Linear Transformer Driver. We employed a time-gated XUV pinhole camera to describe the effect of this mitigation technique on implosion dynamics and filtered photodiodes were used to determine the effects on X-ray production. To complement experimental findings, 2-D MHD simulations were performed with the Multiphysics FLASH code to infer the effect of the load structure on pinch density and ion temperature. Results show that an addition of the target improves the stability of the pinch.