Counter-propagating radiative shock experiments on the Orion laser
Abstract
We present new experiments to study the formation of radiative shocks and the interaction between two counter-propagating radiative shocks. The experiments were performed at the Orion laser facility which was 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 3-dimensional shocks, provides a novel platform particularly suited for benchmarking of numerical codes. The dynamics of the shocks before and after the collision were investigated using point-projection X-ray backlighting while, simultaneously, the electron density in the radiative precursor was measured via optical laser interferometry. Modelling of the experiments using the 2-D radiation hydrodynamic codes NYM/PETRA show a very good agreement with the experimental results.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1706.04824,
title = {Counter-propagating radiative shock experiments on the Orion laser},
author = {F. Suzuki-Vidal and T. Clayson and G. F. Swadling and S. V. Lebedev and G. C. Burdiak and C. Stehlé and U. Chaulagain and R. L. Singh and J. M. Foster and J. Skidmore and E. T. Gumbrell and P. Graham and S. Patankar and C. Danson and C. Spindloe and J. Larour and M. Kozlova and R. Rodriguez and J. M. Gil and G. Espinosa and P. Velarde},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.04824},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters on 14/06/2017