Experimental characterization of railgun-driven supersonic plasma jets motivated by high energy density physics applications
Abstract
We report experimental results on the parameters, structure, and evolution of high-Mach-number (M) argon plasma jets formed and launched by a pulsed-power-driven railgun. The nominal initial average jet parameters in the data set analyzed are density \approx 2 x 10^(16) cm^(-3), electron temperature \approx 1.4 eV, velocity \approx 30 km/s, M \approx 14, ionization fraction \approx 0.96, diameter \approx 5 cm, and length \approx 20 cm. These values approach the range needed by the Plasma Liner Experiment (PLX), which is designed to use merging plasma jets to form imploding spherical plasma liners that can reach peak pressures of 0.1-1 Mbar at stagnation. As these jets propagate a distance of approximately 40 cm, the average density drops by one order of magnitude, which is at the very low end of the 8-160 times drop predicted by ideal hydrodynamic theory of a constant-M jet.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1210.5791,
title = {Experimental characterization of railgun-driven supersonic plasma jets motivated by high energy density physics applications},
author = {S. C. Hsu and E. C. Merritt and A. L. Moser and T. J. Awe and S. J. E. Brockington and J. S. Davis and C. S. Adams and A. Case and J. T. Cassibry and J. P. Dunn and M. A. Gilmore and A. G. Lynn and S. J. Messer and F. D. Witherspoon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1210.5791},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
35 pages, 2 tables, 14 figures, accepted for publication in Physics of Plasmas (12/11/2012)