Z Pinch

The Z-Pinch is a plasma confinement approach that uses an electrical current in the plasma to generate a magnetic field that compresses the plasma itself. The name refers to the direction of the current, the Z direction in cylindrical coordinates. One of the earliest proposed fusion energy schemes, Z-Pinches suffer from kink and sausage instabilities, although these instabilities may be stabilized by a number of techniques being pursued today. See: Shear Flow Stabilization and Staged Z-Pinch.