Date: Dec. 11, 2022

Speaker:
Prof. Dan Sinars
Sandia National Laboratories, NM, USA

Title:

Review of pulsed-power-driven high energy density physics

Abstract:

Pulsed power accelerators compress electrical energy in space and time
to provide versatile experimental platforms for high energy density
and inertial confinement fusion science. The 80-TW "Z" pulsed power
facility at Sandia National Laboratories is the largest pulsed power
device in the world today. Z discharges up to 22 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 delivered to mm-scale
targets. Considerable progress has been made over the last decade in
the use of pulsed power as a precision scientific tool, and multiple
facility performance records have been set . This talk reviews
developments at Sandia in inertial confinement fusion, dynamic
materials science, x-ray radiation science, and pulsed power
technology. In each of these areas the talk will summarize research
spanning fundamental science to highly applied science. I will
conclude with a few remarks on a Next Generation Pulsed Power project
that the U.S. government is considering at this time.