Investigation of the interaction between a supersonic, radiatively cooled, plasma jet with metallic foil and foam targets

Summary form only given. Presenting initial results from an experimental investigation into the interaction of supersonic, radiatively cooled plasma jets with solid targets. The jet is produced with a converging conical plasma flow from a cylindrically symmetric array of inclined wires (a conical wire array) driven by 1.4MA, 250ns current pulse on the MAGPIE Z-pinch. The produced jet has scalable characteristics (Mach number of 20) that allow exploration of astrophysically relevant shock structures arising from the jets interaction with the target and pre ionized material from the target. Different target materials both metallic and foam are explored as well as using both Al and W in the conical array. The interaction with a foil target of the supersonic jet produces a bow shock which has been initially documented with several diagnostics. These include; laser imaging and interferometry at 532nm and 355nm, spectroscopic analysis in both the optical and XUV regime, and Thompson probing through the target using the CERBERUS laser beam line to give the bulk velocity and spatially localized ion/electron plasma temperature in the shock front.