X-ray backlighting of two-wire Z-pinch plasma using X-pinch

Two 50-μm Mo wires in parallel used as a Z-pinch load are electrically exploded with a pulsed current rising to 275 kA in 125 ns and their explosion processes are backlighted using an X-pinch as an x-ray source.The backlighting images show clearly the processes similar to those occurring in the initial stages of a cylindrical wire-array Z-pinch,including the electric explosion of single wires characterised by the dense wire cores surrounded by a low-density coronal plasma,the expansion of the exploding wire,the sausage instability (m=0) in the coronal plasma around each wire,the motion of the coronal plasma as well as the wire core toward the current centroid,the formation of the precursor plasma column with a twist structure something like that of higher mode instability,especially the kink instability (m=1).