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General Information
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Pulsed-power-based sciences encompass areas of research that that make use of pulsed power generators, machines that produce submicrosecond electrical pulses at the level of >1010 W. The Laboratory of Plasma Studies (LPS) at Cornell University has been involved in many aspects of pulsed-power-based-plasma sciences since the Laboratory's inception in 1967. Early research emphasized generation of electron and ion beams at the 1010 to 1012 W power levels and their interaction with gases and plasmas. Applications of interest included magnetic and inertial confinement fusion and high power microwave pulse generation.
In recent years our research emphasis has shifted in the direction of high energy density plasma studies, including exploding fine metal with currents as high as 500,000 Amperes, and wire-arrays with currents as high as 1,000,000 Amperes. The Center for the Study of Pulsed-Power-Driven High Energy Density Plasmas was established to enable us to continue and expand this line of high energy density plasma in collaboration with researchers at Imperial College, London, the University of Nevada, Reno, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow. The plasmas produced by exploding wires with 1,000,000 Ampere pulses are very hot and dense - the reason for calling them high energy density. Conditions in our laboratory reach 1-10 million degrees at a density close to that of solid material. Such plasmas last for very short times -a small fraction of a millionth of a second - requiring us to use state of the art diagnostic instruments to study their properties and undertand their dynamics. The various specific configurations of exploding wire arrays that we study for different purposes are discussed in the Research Interests page of this web site. The results from experiments with these configurations are discussed in detail in our Publications.
The Center for Pulsed-Power-Driven High Energy Density Plasma Studies is funded through a Cooperative Agreement with the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). High energy density, rapidly evolving plasmas are central to the NNSA stockpile stewardship program. For some important high energy density plasma (HEDP) applications, pulsed-power generators are the most cost-effective way to produce the desired experimental conditions. This is the case for generating high energy, short pulse x-ray sources for inertial confinement fusion studies. The Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, uses their Z-machine, a 20 million Ampere pulsed power generator, explode cylindrical arrays of metal wires to generate up to 2 million Joules of x-rays [Gerold Yonas, Scientific American, August 1998, p. 40]. The Sandia experiments motivated our initial studies of individual exploding wire dynamics at Cornell, and the are the reason why the Imperial College, London, group with which we collaborate in the Center initiated its studies of circular arrays of exploding wires.
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