title: A torquing shearing interferometer for cylindrical wire array experiments.
abstract: In standard shearing interferometry, a single probing beam passes through a perturbing medium and is then split into two beams. A linear shift results in an overlap, an interference, and a fringe pattern yielding the perturbing medium density profile. The probing beam usually needs to be larger than the perturbing medium so that part of it passes through a well separated low density region. During early time axial (end-on) views of imploding cylindrical wire arrays low density regions lie in between the high density regions that are near the initial wire positions. In addition, for end-on viewing, the probing beam diameter is limited by electrodes and is comparable to the array diameter. In this case a linear translation will not work but the overlap can be accomplished by an azimuthal rotation of one beam with respect to the other. Such a torquing shearing interferometer has been set up on the COBRA experiment to give time resolved, radial, and azimuthal electron density profiles during early time cylindrical wire array implosions.
authors.affiliation: Cornell University, 439 Rhodes Hall, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA. sap17@cornell.edu
authors.forename: S A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Pikuz
authors.forename: P C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Schrafel
authors.forename: T A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Shelkovenko
authors.forename: B R
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Kusse