Augsburg 2006 – scientific programme

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P: Plasmaphysik

P 28: Astrophysikalische Plasmen; Dichte Plasmen 1; Schwerionen- und lasererzeugte Plasmen 2; Staubige Plasmen 4; Theorie 1

P 28.7: Poster

Wednesday, March 29, 2006, 17:30–19:00, Flure

Kink instabilities in 1m long, free-standing plasma channels — •Stephan Neff¹, Renate Knobloch-Maas¹, Andreas Tauschwitz², Dieter H.H. Hoffmann^1,2, and Simon S. Yu³ — ¹Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany — ²Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung, Darmstadt, Germany — ³Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA

Z-pinches are studied at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung as a possible means to transport heavy-ion beams in an inertial fusion reactor chamber. Apart from its beam transport properties, we also study the dynamics and the stability of the channel. The channel has a temperature of some eV and reaches electron densities of up to 10¹⁸ cm⁻³. Our experiments show that our channels can be subject to kink instabilities for high pressures (above 15 mbar), but that their growth rate is much smaller than expected from ideal MHD theory, due to the finite conductivity of the plasma and stabilizing effects. The measurements therefore show that MHD instabilities are no obstacle for using plasma channels for final transport in an ICF target chamber.