The Electric Discharge in Superhigh Density Gas at Current Amplitude up   to 5x10^5 A
  The investigations of powerful discharge in high density hydrogen were carried out on an installation with preliminary adiabatic compression. The experiments were performed under the following conditions: stored energy of the capacitive storage - 140-450 kJ, charging voltage - 8.0-14.0 kV, discharge current amplitude- 200-600 kA, current rise rate - 10^9-10^10 A/s. The maximum particle density nmax, achieved just before the discharge, was about 2.0x10^22 cm-3. It was observed one or several compression of the discharge channel. The moments of contractions corresponds a increase of voltage on discharge gap and feature on a curve of a current. Arc parameters were calculated on the basis of the channel model. It was established that increase of the initial density of particles at increase of a current rate of rise results in reduction of arc diameter with increase of channel temperature. 
Philip Rutberg, A. Bogomaz, A. Budin, M. Pinchuk, A. Savvateev