Abstract
A Thomson scattering diagnostic has been used to measure the parameters of cylindrical wire array pinch plasmas during the ablation phase. The scattering operates in the collective regime () allowing spatially localized measurements of the ion or electron plasma temperatures and of the plasma bulk velocity. The ablation flow is found to accelerate towards the axis reaching peak velocities of in aluminium and in tungsten arrays. Precursor ion temperature measurements made shortly after formation are found to correspond to the kinetic energy of the converging ablation flow.
- Received 20 October 2011
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.145002
© 2012 American Physical Society