| any electromagnetic railgun accelerators use plasma armatures to push projectiles up to velocities in excess of 4km/sec. Research is being conducted at the University of Texas at Arlington Power Conditioning Lab to investigate the physics of these plasma armatures using a railgun simulator.;This thesis describes the interferometric measurement of the electron density profile of the plasma armature. This is the first interferometric experiment to measure the electron density of a linearly accelerating plasma, and the first experiment to measure this parameter on a railgun device. For a range of currents through the plasma armature of 25kA-75kA, light at a wavelength of 514nm was transmitted through the plasma, and the electron density had a magnitude of... |
