Shock interactions between plasma jets from conical wire array Z-pinches and laser-produced plasma plume

Abstract

The interaction of a supersonic plasma jet outflow with a background laser-produced plasma plume is experimentally studied. The aim of these studies is to provide an experimental platform to study jet-ambient interactions in an environment relevant to high energy density physics scenarios. The jet outflow is produced by a conical wire array Z-pinch composed of 16 aluminum wires (40 μm diameter each) acting as load of the Llampudken generator (∼400kA, ∼350 ns). The laser plasma plume is produced by focusing a 2 × 1010 W/cm2 laser pulse onto an aluminum target. Our experimental results show that in the absence of laser plasma plume, there is no significant photoionized plasma from the target that interacts with the jet outflow. On the contrary, when combining both plasma sources, a new structure appears at the interaction region. The thickness of this structure is of the order of the inter-particle ion-ion mean free path, which was calculated for a wide range of parameters for each plasma. These results indicate the presence of a collisional shock layer created after the interaction. Further details and potential applications are shown and discussed.

Keywords

• Wire arrays
• Z-pinch
• Laser-produced plasma
• Shocks