Multi-frame synchrotron based radiography of instability growth in pulsed power driven HEDP experiments*

We present the first use of multi-frame radiography from a high intensity synchrotron source to analyse the pulsed power driven explosion of wires placed in a water bath. This has enabled detailed measurements of multiple physical features, including the development of striations in the warm, dense matter of the exploding wires and, by interacting the wires with strong  shock waves, detailed measurements of the growth of Richmeyer Meshkov instabilities.

Experiments utilised the ID19 beamline at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and imaged 200µm diameter aluminium and tungsten wires exploded by a compact 30kA, 500ns current source. The high coherence of the ~30KeV probing radiation enabled beam propagation phase contrast imaging to be employed,  allowing shockwaves launched by the exploding wires into the water bath and details of material inside the wires to be simultaneously captured with resolutions up to 8µm. Each experiment could have up to 128 frames of data, 0.1ns in duration, separated 704ns, and in future far faster frames could be employed.