Measurements of electrical conductivity and the mean ionization state of nonideal aluminum plasmas

Abstract

Thin pure aluminum wires which are rapidly vaporized in small glass capillaries by means of a short pulse current from an electrical discharge convert into a nonideal plasma near solid density. For a short period of time, the inner wall of the rigid glass capillary confines the homogeneous plasma until the induced pressure pulse disintegrates the capillary. During this part of the discharge, no instabilities occur, and the transient plasma covers a range of parameters according to the charge of the capacitors: the particle density ranges from 0.001 to $1.0{\mathrm{g}/\mathrm{c}\mathrm{m}}^3,$ the temperature from 7000 to 24 000 K and the electron density from $2.0\times {10}^{25}$ to $3.0\times {10}^{26}{\mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{-}3}.$ Plasma conductivity was deduced by simply applying Ohm’s law to the measured voltage drop across the wire and to the measured current through the wire.