An experimental investigation into the interaction of a supersonic, radiatively cooled plasma jet with argon gas is presented. The jet is formed by ablation of an aluminum foil driven by a 1.4 MA, 250 ns current pulse in a radial foil Z-pinch configuration. The outflow consists of a supersonic (Mach number ∼3–5), dense (ion density ni ∼ 1018 cm−3), highly collimated (half-opening angle ∼2°−5°) jet surrounded by a lower density halo plasma moving with the same axial velocity as the jet. The addition of argon above the foil leads to the formation of a shock driven by the ablation of halo plasma, together with a bow-shock driven by the dense jet. Experimental data with and without the presence of argon are compared with three-dimensional, magneto-hydrodynamic simulations using the GORGON code.
The physics of accretion disks is of fundamental importance for understanding of a wide variety of astrophysical sources that includes protostars, X-ray binaries, and active galactic nuclei. The interplay between hydrodynamic flows and magnetic fields and the potential for turbulence-producing instabilities is a topic of active research that would benefit from the support of dedicated experimental studies. Such efforts are in their infancy, but in an effort to push the enterprise forward we propose an experimental configuration which employs a modified cylindrical wire array Z-pinch to produce a rotating plasma flow relevant to accretion disks. We present three-dimensional resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations which show how this approach can be implemented. In the simulations, a rotating plasma cylinder or ring is formed, with typical rotation velocity ∼30 km s −1 , Mach number ∼4, and Reynolds number in excess of 10 7 . The plasma is also differentially rotating. Implementation of different external magnetic field configurations is discussed. It is found that a modest uniform vertical field of 1 T can affect the dynamics of the system and could be used to study magnetic field entrainment and amplification through differential rotation. A dipolar field potentially relevant to the study of accretion columns is also considered.
We present experimental results on the formation of supersonic, radiatively cooled jets driven by pressure due to the toroidal magnetic field generated by the 1.5 MA, 250 ns current from the MAGPIE generator. The morphology of the jet produced in the experiments is relevant to astrophysical jet scenarios in which a jet on the axis of a magnetic cavity is collimated by a toroidal magnetic field as it expands into the ambient medium. The jets in the experiments have similar Mach number, plasma beta and cooling parameter to those in protostellar jets. Additionally the Reynolds, magnetic Reynolds and Peclet numbers are much larger than unity, allowing the experiments to be scaled to astrophysical flows. The experimental configuration allows for the generation of episodic magnetic cavities, suggesting that periodic fluctuations near the source may be responsible for some of the variability observed in astrophysical jets. Preliminary measurements of kinetic, magnetic and Poynting energy of the jets in our experiments are presented and F. Suzuki-Vidal ( ) · S.V. Lebedev · S.N. Bland · G.N. Hall ·
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