Formation of Radiatively cooled, Supersonically Rotating, Plasma Disks in Z-pinch experiments

We present data from z-pinch experiments aiming to simulate aspects of accretion disk physics in the laboratory. Using off axis ablation flows from a wire array z-pinch we demonstrate the formation of a hollow disk structure that rotates supersonically with velocity of $\sim$ 60km/s and M$\sim $2 for $\sim$ 150 ns. We use interferometry to measure the electron density as \textgreater 10$^{19}$ cm$^{-3}$ and analyze Thomson Scattered spectra to make estimates for the ion and electron temperatures; we find T$_{\mathrm{i}} \sim $60 eV and ZT$_{\mathrm{e}}$ $\sim $150 to 200 eV. Using these parameters we calculate the Reynolds number for the plasma on the order 10$^{5}$ putting the experiment within the correct viscous regime for turbulent flow and scaling to accretion disks.