Unstable Behavior in Exploding Wire Array

Although considerable investigations have been reported on z-pinches to achieve nuclear fusion, little attention has been given from the point of view of how a wire array consisting of many parallel wires explodes. In this paper, the unstable behavior of a wire array is investigated. The instability occurs by the deviation from the homogeneous current flow through many wires. The expressions discriminating between the stability and the instability are derived. Using the resistivity variation of the wire, the unstable behavior during the explosion of the wires is predicted and the strength of the tendency to an unstable behavior is evaluated. The unstable region on a map of resistivities is independent of the wire number while the strength of the tendency to the unstable behavior depends on the wire number.