Collision and interpenetration of plasmas created by laser-illuminated disks

Abstract

Supersonic, counterstreaming plasmas were produced by ablating plasma from the inside surfaces of two parallel disks made of aluminum and magnesium, respectively, with a 0.53 pm laser at an intensity of lOi W/cm2 for 1.3 nsec. Diagnostics included holographic interferometry, a time-integrated x-ray pinhole camera and a gated x-ray crystal spectrograph with imaging slits. The plasmas interpenetrate for the first half of the laser pulse but stagnate once the electron density exceeds 5 X 102' cmF3. Spectroscopic measurements suggest a coronal electron temperature of -800 eV and an ion temperature of -15 keV in the stagnated plasma. The observations are in good agreement with a two ion fluid model of interpenetrating plasmas in which the dominant slowing down process is ion-ion collisions.

Experimental evidence for collisional shock formation via two obliquely merging supersonic plasma jets

“…Related studies include counter-streaming laser-produced plasmas supporting hohlraum design for indirect-drive inertial confinement fusion [17][18][19] and for studying astrophysically relevant shocks, [20][21][22][23][24] colliding plasmas using wire-array Z pinches, 25,26 and applications such as pulsed laser deposition 27 and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. 28 Primary issues of interest in these studies include the identification of shock formation, the formation of a stagnation layer [29][30][31] between colliding plasmas, and the possible role of two-fluid and kinetic effects on plasma interpenetration.…”

Ion heating dynamics in solid buried layer targets irradiated by ultra-short intense laser pulses

“…As of yet, most experimental studies focus on the long-term evolution of ion heating on the order of several hundred picoseconds to nanoseconds [7][8][9][10] . This is due to the fact that heating a significant part of all ions in a solid-density target to temperatures of several hundred eV is usually only possible using high-energy laser pulses of several hundred Joule and picosecond to nanosecond time scale.…”

X-ray emission from colliding laser plasmas

“…4 indicates that the collision strength is highly dependent on T, and 2 and only weakly dependent on the ion density n,. Eq.…”