What does "z-pinch" mean?

A kind of plasma confinement system that uses an electrical current in the plasma to generate a magnetic field that compresses it.

What is a synonym for "z-pinch"?

Common synonyms include: bennett pinch, zeta pinch.

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A kind of plasma confinement system that uses an electrical current in the plasma to generate a magnetic field that compresses it.

Z refers to the direction of the current in the devices, the z-axis on a normal three-dimensional graph.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.