Characteristics of Microsecond Wire Array$Z$-Pinches on SPHINX Machine

The SPHINX facility (with 1-mus rise time and 5 MA) has been developed for soft X-ray production at the Centre d'Etudes de Gramat, Gramat, France. The first experiments were performed with aluminum nested wire arrays Z-pinches for K-shell production. A K-shell yield of up to 25 kJ and the full-width at half-maximum of an X-ray pulse of about 50 ns were obtained with an 800-ns implosion time and a 4-MA peak current. The specific features observed during these experiments are discussed. Inner-array dynamics highlights the fact that resistivity should not be neglected in the analysis. The effect of the return-current housing on the array dynamics, as well as the ways to mitigate it and control its impact on the radiation pulse, is also examined