Pulsed power accelerators compress electrical energy in time and space to provide versatile experimental platforms for high energy density and inertial confinement fusion science. The 80 TW “Z” pulsed power facility at Sandia is the largest such machine in the world today. Z discharges over 20 MJ of energy stored in its capacitor banks into a current pulse that rises in 100 ns and peaks at a current as high as 30 MA in cylindrical targets. Versatile pulse shaping has also been developed to precisely tailor current delivery over longer timescales (up to 1.5 microseconds) for dynamic material properties experiments. Considerable progress has been made in the use of pulsed power as a precision tool. This talk will provide research highlights in three major areas of research on Z: (1) dynamic materials science, (2) magneto-inertial fusion, and (3) the Z Fundamental Science Program. The talk will also provide more details regarding the Z Fundamental Science Program and discuss the next call for proposals.
Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.
