Preliminary opacity experiments in dense high Z plasmas on the magpie facility

Summary form only given, as follows. Detailed knowledge of the opacity of warm, dense plasmas is critically important for many astrophysics phenomena e.g. the power output of Cepheid Variables, as well as for other radiative processes including inertial confinement fusion. We present preliminary experiments designed to measure the opacity of warm, dense plasmas (n
i
∼10e17 – 10e19, T ∼5–50eV) on the MAGPIE 1.4MA facility at Imperial College London. The precursor plasma of a cylindrical wire array z-pinch is explored as a source of these plasmas, due to it being long-lived and stable for 100s of ns
^1,2
; which may allow even high Z elements to approach LTE. Probing radiation for the experiments was supplied via a high Z X-pinch which is capable of producing a high intensity, point burst of X-radiation, with a wide continuum.