Overview of the experimental data on the use of a vacuum arc discharge for Z-pinches

In the paper [1] the technology using a vacuum arc discharge for the formation Z-pinches was called “the metallic puff”. We agree that term is quite successful and we will use it. When we start to investigate the metallic puff, we wanted to get a method to produce metal shells that would be reusable, technological, would allow the formation of cylindrical multi-shells, would have a good initial conductivity and could potentially be used both in small and large current generators. A metallic puff can satisfy all these requirements. Development of the technology of the metallic puff is going in two directions. The first direction is the use of a plasma jet for the X-ray radiography [2]. Second direction is the use of a metallic puff for the formation of single-or multi-shell liners. At the moment experiments with a metallic puff were carried out on the IMRI-5 (450 kA, 450 ns) and MIG (2.1 MA, 100 ns) high-current generators. It was shown that Raleigh-Taylor instabilities are suppressed almost completely at the implosion of Z-pinch with power-law density profile [3]. In fact, the plasma boundary is stable during the run-in-phase of implosion. The instabilities with m=0 and m=1 appear only in the stagnation phase [3,4].