Experimental Investigation of the Inductance of an Imploding Z-Pinch Plasma Column Close to Stagnation

New measurements of the magnetic field at several axial position along the column of an imploding plasma column, as a function of radius and time are presented. The optical configuration, efficient in UV-visible light collection, provided simultaneous radial measurement points, along with revoking the use of Abel-inversion in the analysis. These measurements help to assess the true inductance of the plasma column during the implosion, following our previous studies 1 , where there was no satisfactory explanation to the current turnover (“notch”). 2D MHD simulations are presented for the initial gas flow, including the details of the recessed regions in the cathode- anode structure. Synthetic images and the calculated azimuthal magnetic field distribution at stagnation are compared with the previous and present measurements of the field and current profiles.