Published: 1988
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During the past few years techniques have been developed for producing pinches in solid deuterium. The conditions which exist in these plasmas are quiet different from those produced earlier. The pinch is formed from a fiber of solid deuterium rather than from a low density gas, and the current is driven by a low impedance, high voltage pulse generator. Because of the high initial density, it is not necessary to compress the pinch to reach thermonuclear conditions, and the confinement time required for energy production is much shorter than for a gas. The experimental results, which have been verified by experiments performed at higher current were quite surprising and encouraging. The pinch appeared to be stable for a time much longer than the Alfven radial transit time. In this paper, however, I argue that the pinch is not strictly stable, but it does not appear to disassemble in a catastrophic fashion. It appears that there may be a distinction between stability and confinement in the high density pinch. In the discussion below I will present the status of the high density Z-pinch experiments at laboratories around the world, and I will describe some of the calculational and experimental results. I will confine my remarks to recent work on the high density pinch. 17 refs. 10 figs.