Interferometry of flashboard and cable-gun plasma opening switches on Hawk

Interferometry of plasma opening switch (POS) plasmas on the Hawk generator has shown many important features of the plasma evolution during conduction and opening. Opening occurs when a low-density region forms at a radial location determined by plasma redistribution during the conduction phase, consistent with J/spl times/B forces and the measured plasma distributions produced by the sources alone. High neutral densities have been detected in the POS region during conduction. Low-density plasma appears between the POS and the load at the time current appears in the load, and high-density plasmas appear there later in time. There are two important differences between the density evolution of POS's utilizing flashboard and cable-gun plasma sources. 1) There is a substantial (two-three times) increase in the electron inventory during conduction using cable guns that is not detected using flashboards. This is attributed, primarily, to ionization of ions and neutrals for the cable-gun case. 2) The conduction scaling with plasma density implies that the cable-gun POS has an effective ion mass/charge ratio about double that for the flashboard POS.