X-ray absorption spectroscopy for wire-array Z-pinches at the non-radiative stage

Abstract Absorption spectroscopy was applied to wire-array Z-pinches on the 1 MA pulsed-power Zebra generator at the Nevada Terawatt Facility (NTF). The 50 TW Leopard laser was coupled with the Zebra generator for X-ray backlighting of wire arrays at the ablation stage. Broadband X-ray emission from a laser-produced Sm plasma was used to backlight Al star wire arrays in the range of 7–9 A. Two time-integrated X-ray conical spectrometers recorded reference and absorption spectra. The spectrometers were shielded from the bright Z-pinch X-ray burst by collimators. The comparison of plasma-transmitted spectra with reference spectra indicates absorption lines in the range of 8.1–8.4 A. Analysis of Al K-shell absorption spectra with detailed atomic kinetics models shows a distribution of electron temperature in the range of 10–30 eV that was fitted with an effective two-temperature model. Temperature and density distributions in wire-array plasma were simulated with a three-dimension magneto-hydrodynamic code. Post-processing of this code’s output yields synthetic transmission spectrum which is in general agreement with the data.