Design and optimization of a liner-on-target injector for staged Z-pinch experiments using computational fluid dynamics and MHD simulations

Previous Staged Z-pinch experiments have demonstrated that gas liners (or puffs) can efficiently couple energy to a target plasma and implode uniformly, producing plasmas in High Energy Density (HED) regimes. In these experiments, a 50 kJ, 1.5 MA, 1 μs current driver was used to implode a magnetized, Kr liner onto a D+ target, producing 1010 neutrons per shot. Time-of-flight data suggested that primary and secondary neutrons were produced.