Study of stagnation layer of laterally colliding laser produced aluminium plasmas

Abstract

When two dense laser produced plasmas collide, a layer of plasma stagnates at the collision front exhibiting special properties, is called stagnation layer. The characteristics of stagnation layer formed due to the collision of two laser produced aluminium plasmas were studied using spectroscopic and the fast imaging techniques. Time gated Intensified Charge Coupled Device (ICCD) imaging was used to study the temporal evolution of stagnation region and time resolved spectroscopy was used to obtain information about the distribution of neutral as well as the ionic species in collision process of laterally colliding aluminum plasmas. Electron density and temperature of the stagnation layer were also calculated from the emission spectra. The overall experiment results clearly depict the peculiar properties of stagnation layer which is more advantageous than the conventional laser produced plasma.