The role of radiative cooling during the evolution of a bow shock was studied in laboratoryastrophysics experiments that are scalable to bow shocks present in jets from young stellar objects. The laboratory bow shock is formed during the collision of two counter-streaming, supersonic plasma jets produced by an opposing pair of radial foil Z-pinches driven by the current pulse from the MAG-PIE pulsed-power generator. The jets have different flow velocities in the laboratory frame and the experiments are driven over many times the characteristic cooling time-scale. The initially smooth bow shock rapidly develops small-scale non-uniformities over temporal and spatial scales that are consistent with a thermal instability triggered by strong radiative cooling in the shock. The growth of these perturbations eventually results in a global fragmentation of the bow shock front. The formation of a thermal instability is supported by analysis of the plasma cooling function calculated for the experimental conditions with the radiative packages ABAKO/RAPCAL.

We present new experiments to study the formation of radiative shocks and the interaction between two counterpropagating radiative shocks. The experiments are performed at the Orion laser facility, which is used to drive shocks in xenon inside large aspect ratio gas cells. The collision between the two shocks and their respective radiative precursors, combined with the formation of inherently three-dimensional shocks, provides a novel platform particularly suited for the benchmarking of numerical codes. The dynamics of the shocks before and after the collision are investigated using point-projection x-ray backlighting while, simultaneously, the electron density in the radiative precursor was measured via optical laser interferometry. Modeling of the experiments using the 2D radiation hydrodynamic codes nym and petra shows very good agreement with the experimental results.

Numerical simulations of laboratory astrophysics experiments on plasma flows require plasma microscopic properties that are obtained by means of an atomic kinetic model. This fact implies a careful choice of the most suitable model for the experiment under analysis. Otherwise, the calculations could lead to inaccurate results and inappropriate conclusions. First, a study of the validity of the local thermodynamic equilibrium in the calculation of the average ionization, mean radiative properties, and cooling times of argon plasmas in a range of plasma conditions of interest in laboratory astrophysics experiments on radiative shocks is performed in this work. In the second part, we have made an analysis of the influence of the atomic kinetic model used to calculate plasma microscopic properties of experiments carried out on MAGPIE on radiative bow shocks propagating in argon. The models considered were developed assuming both local and nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium and, for the latter situation, we have considered in the kinetic model different effects such as external radiation field and plasma mixture. The microscopic properties studied were the average ionization, the charge state distributions, the monochromatic opacities and emissivities, the Planck mean opacity, and the radiative power loss. The microscopic study was made as a postprocess of a radiative-hydrodynamic simulation of the experiment. We have also performed a theoretical analysis of the influence of these atomic kinetic models in the criteria for the onset possibility of thermal instabilities due to radiative cooling in those experiments in which small structures were experimentally observed in the bow shock that could be due to this kind of instability.

Radiative properties play a pivotal role in astrophysical plasma flows and are needed in radiationhydrodynamic simulations in order to understand their behavior and also to interpret the plasma emission spectra, which are valuable diagnostic tools. Radiative properties of astrophysical plasma mixtures have been commonly calculated for low-density optically thin plasmas assuming coronal equilibrium and for high density assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium. However, there are wide ranges of conditions in which these thermodynamic regimes are not achieved and the plasma is in the nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium regime. In the present work, a study of the plasma radiative properties of oxygen and iron and an astrophysical plasma mixture in nonlocal thermodynamic steady-state equilibrium is carried out. The ranges of electron temperatures and densities considered are 1-1000 eV and 10 11-10 20 cm −3 , respectively. In the study, departures from coronal and local thermodynamic equilibria in terms of the density and temperature are also analyzed. Large differences in the radiative properties that can reach two orders of magnitude when the plasma is far from these thermodynamic regimes are obtained. These analyses are done assuming the plasma to be optically thin. A brief study of the influence of the plasma self-absorption in the radiative properties of oxygen and iron is made. For that purpose, the plasma is assumed with planar geometry and the study is performed in terms of the width of the plasma slab and electron temperature and density.

In this work several relevant parameters and properties for krypton and xenon plasmas are analyzed, such as, for example, the average ionization, the plasma thermodynamic regimes, the radiative power losses and the mean opacities. This analysis is performed in a range of density and temperature typically found in laboratory experiments to generate radiative blast waves in laser-heated clustered plasmas. A polynomial fit of those parameters is also presented. Finally an analysis of the thermal cooling instability is performed.