Experiment to Form and Characterize a Section of a Spherically Imploding Plasma Liner

TL;DR

This paper reports on experiments forming a section of a spherically imploding plasma liner by merging six supersonic plasma jets, aiming to inform future fusion applications.

Contribution

It introduces a new experimental setup with contoured-gap coaxial plasma guns and initial data on jet merging for plasma liner formation.

Findings

Successful formation of a plasma liner section from six jets.

Assessment of Mach number and uniformity evolution.

Initial diagnostic data supporting future scaling studies.

Abstract

We describe an experiment to form and characterize a section of a spherically imploding plasma liner by merging six supersonic plasma jets that are launched by newly designed contoured-gap coaxial plasma guns. This experiment is a prelude to forming a fully spherical imploding plasma liner using many dozens of plasma guns, as a standoff driver for plasma-jet-driven magneto-inertial fusion. The objectives of the six-jet experiments are to assess the evolution and scalings of liner Mach number and uniformity, which are important metrics for spherically imploding plasma liners to compress magnetized target plasmas to fusion conditions. This paper describes the design of the coaxial plasma guns, experimental characterization of the plasma jets, six-jet experimental setup and diagnostics, initial diagnostic data from three- and six-jet experiments, and the high-level objectives of associated numerical modeling.