Time-Dependent Helical Magnetic Field Effects on Cylindrical Liner Ablations

Cylindrical liner implosions and ablations are susceptible to the magneto Rayleigh-Taylor (MRT) instability and general magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities, such as the $m=0$ “sausage” and the $m=1$ “kink” instabilities, where $m$ is the azimuthal mode number. Previous work has experimentally shown the effects of long pulse axial magnetic fields on these instabilities in both cylindrical liner ablations and implosions1. Simulations have also shown the effects of a time dependent helical magnetic field on the MRT instability using a dynamic screw pinch2, We have modeled and fabricated a helical return current path to set up such a field configuration (a predicted peak axial field of $B_{z}=2\mathrm{T}$ for a peak current of $I_{max}=600$ kA). This poster will present simulation results on the expected magnetic field profile as well as experimental measurements of the magnetic field values achieved.