Estimates of the electron temperature of a micropinch-discharge plasma by attenuation of the X-ray flux in a photoemulsion

A study has been performed on the Zona-2 high-current pulsed micropinch installation. The spatial structure and the spectral distribution of X rays emitted by the plasma have been investigated with the use of a three-channel pinhole camera and a set of absorbing filters. The behavior of attenuation curves points to the presence of two groups of electrons having different energies in the micropinch region and, accordingly, to values of thermal electron temperature Te and epithermal electron temperature Tep (Te ≈ 1.9 ± 0.7 keV and Tep ≈ 20 ± 8 keV). A detector based on a plastic scintillator has been used for studying the spectrum dynamics. Two crystal spectrographs have been used to obtain spectra of multiply charged ions. It has been found that changes in the electrode surface affect the development of the discharge.