Dramatic reduction of Magneto-Rayleigh Taylor instability growth in magnetically driven Z-pinch liners

In this paper, we will present new Z-pinch liner experiments on Sandia's Z facility (20 MA, 100ns current pulse) that demonstrate the integral Magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor (MRT) instability growth can be dramatically limited by controlling the growth of electrothermal instabilities that form early in the electrical current pulse as Joule heating melts and vaporizes the liner surface[1]. In these experiments, we implode Al and Be solid liners to inertial confinement fusion relevant velocities [2] and large convergence ratios and show that thick (∼70 μm) dielectric coatings are very effective in controlling the deleterious effects of the electrothermal instability, limiting the seed for subsequent MRT growth, and ultimately lead to a more stable implosion. These experiments extend the previously reported work on the Z facility which also showed dramatic reduction of instability growth in non-imploding solid metallic rods[3].