Biermann-battery driven magnetized collisionless shock precursors in laser produced plasmas
Abstract
This letter reports the first complete observation of magnetized collisionless shock precursors formed through the compression of Biermann-battery magnetic fields in laser produced plasmas. At OMEGA, lasers produce a supersonic CH plasma flow which is magnetized with Biermann-battery magnetic fields. The plasma flow collides with an unmagnetized hydrogen gas jet plasma to create a magnetized shock precursor. The situation where the flowing plasma carries the magnetic field is similar to the Venusian bow shock. Imaging 2 Thomson scattering confirms that the interaction is collisionless and shows density and temperature jumps. Proton radiographs have regions of strong deflections and FLASH magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations show the presence of Biermann fields in the Thomson scattering region. Electrons are accelerated to energies of up to 100 keV in a power-law spectrum. OSIRIS particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, initialized with measured parameters, show the formation of a magnetized shock precursor and corroborate the experimental observables.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2409.03076,
title = {Biermann-battery driven magnetized collisionless shock precursors in laser produced plasmas},
author = {Timothy Johnson and Graeme Sutcliffe and Jacob Pearcy and Andrew Birkel and Gabriel Rigon and Neel Kabadi and Brandon Lahmann and Patrick Adrian and Benjamin Reichelt and Justin Kunimune and Skylar Dannhoff and Matt Cufari and Frank Tsung and Hui Chen and Joseph Katz and Vladimir Tikhonchuk and Chikang Li},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.03076},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
6 pages, 5 figures