SummaryThe design and construction of two highly ionized hydrogenous plasma sources are described. Details are also given of the measurements that have been made to investigate the formation, density distribution, and decay of plasmas.
A normal ionizing shock wave is one which propagates, with its shock front perpendicular to a steady magnetic field, into a neutral gas producing ionization. In the experiments described a cylindrical shock tube of length 170 cm and diameter 21.4 cm was used to study shock velocities and such post-shock parameters as electric fields, densities and temperatures in helium. Over a range of steady magnetic fields from 3 kG to 12 kG, discharge currents from 10 to 140 kA and gas pressures of 50, 100 and 200 mtorr, it was found that the shock velocities and electric fields behind the shock agree well with those theoretically predicted from the conservation equations and a modified form of the Chapman-Jouget hypothesis. In these calculations it was assumed that the Saha equation was applicable to the plasma. Spectroscopie measurements of the density and temperature shock profiles were also made, and are compared with those obtained from Thomson scattering.
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