Experimental study of a new mechanism of magnetic flux cumulation by the propagation of shock-compressed conductive region in silicon

A new mechanism of magnetic flux compression proposed by one of the authors has been experimentally proved promising for the generation of ultrahigh pulsed fields. A cylindrical implosion type device is used here, and the thin metal liner normally used is replaced by a solid cylinder of crystalline or powdery silicon. As predicted by the theory, the field compression factor depends strongly on the initial density of the silicon, on the explosive, and on the scale. A typical value of the field multiplication factor is 17.8 for a 45-mm-diam silicon cylinder of density 1.1 g/cm3.