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 implosions
¹
. Simulations have also shown the effects of a time dependent helical magnetic field on the MRT instability using a dynamic screw pinch
²
, 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.