Experimental evidence for collisional shock formation via two obliquely merging supersonic plasma jets
Plasma Physics
2014-04-28 v5
Abstract
We report spatially resolved measurements of the oblique merging of two supersonic laboratory plasma jets. The jets are formed and launched by pulsed-power-driven railguns using injected argon, and have electron density cm, electron temperature eV, ionization fraction near unity, and velocity km/s just prior to merging. The jet merging produces a few-cm-thick stagnation layer, as observed in both fast-framing camera images and multi-chord interferometer data, consistent with collisional shock formation [E. C. Merritt et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 111}, 085003 (2013)].
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1311.6527,
title = {Experimental evidence for collisional shock formation via two obliquely merging supersonic plasma jets},
author = {Elizabeth C. Merritt and Auna L. Moser and Scott C. Hsu and Colin S. Adams and John P. Dunn and A. Miguel Holgado and Mark A. Gilmore},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1311.6527},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
11 pages, 9 figures, accepted by Physics of Plasmas (to be published in 2014 May issue)