X-ray Astronomy in the Laboratory with a Miniature Compact Object Produced by Laser-Driven Implosion
Abstract
Laboratory spectroscopy of non-thermal equilibrium plasmas photoionized by intense radiation is a key to understanding compact objects, such as black holes, based on astronomical observations. This paper describes an experiment to study photoionizing plasmas in laboratory under well-defined and genuine conditions. Photoionized plasma is here generated using a 0.5-keV Planckian x-ray source created by means of a laser-driven implosion. The measured x-ray spectrum from the photoionized silicon plasma resembles those observed from the binary stars Cygnus X-3 and Vela X-1 with the Chandra x-ray satellite. This demonstrates that an extreme radiation field was produced in the laboratory, however, the theoretical interpretation of the laboratory spectrum significantly contradicts the generally accepted explanations in x-ray astronomy. This model experiment offers a novel test bed for validation and verification of computational codes used in x-ray astronomy.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0909.0315,
title = {X-ray Astronomy in the Laboratory with a Miniature Compact Object Produced by Laser-Driven Implosion},
author = {Shinsuke Fujioka and Hideaki Takabe and Norimasa Yamamoto and David Salzmann and Feilu Wang and Hiroaki Nishimura and Yutong Li and Quanli Dong and Shoujun Wang and Yi Zhang and Yong-Joo Rhee and Yong-Woo Lee and Jae-Min Han and Minoru Tanabe and Takashi Fujiwara and Yuto Nakabayashi and Gang Zhao and Jie Zhang and Kunioki Mima},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0909.0315},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
5 pages, 4 figures are included. This is the original submitted version of the manuscript to be published in Nature Physics