Use of the Pegasus Z pinch machine to study inertial instabilities in aluminum: a preliminary report

We have designed a target to probe the use of the Pegasus Z-Pinch machine to image inertial instabilities that develop on cylindrical- convergent material interfaces. The Z-pinch is tailored so that the target, soft Al 1100-O, remains solid; instabilities and inertial effects are seeded by wire inclusions of different densities. We present here the first images and preliminary results from this experiment.