Development of Time Resolved Technique to Infer 1-Dimensional Magnetic Field Distribution from Zeeman Broadened Lines

"The magnetic field distribution in a current carrying plasma, such as Z-pinch, can be used to infer the currents flowing in the pinch and to study physical process such as the Rayleigh-Taylor (R-T) instability during the implosion phase. The currentcommutation process is particularly difficult to measure in nested array loads and in concentric magnetic flux compression experiments. Faraday rotation techniques are too insensitive for measurements during the implosion phase. Similarly, the Zeemansplitting of spectrally resolved line profiles are difficult to infer when the Zeeman shift DlZ is much smaller then the absorption line width Dla. HY-Tech proposes to infer the Zeeman splitting from recorded spectra of the right and left circularlypolarized s components. The spectra are recorded while viewing the plasma along the field direction using a polarimeter to spatially separate the two circular components at the input slit of the spectrometer. Radially or axially resolved spectra with a 1mm resolution at 10 spatial locations will be used to study the R-T instability and current commutation during the implosion phase."