Formation of Episodic Magnetically Driven Radiatively Cooled Plasma Jets in the Laboratory

Abstract

We report on experiments in which magnetically driven radiatively cooled plasma jets were produced by a 1 MA, 250 ns current pulse on the MAGPIE pulsed power facility. The jets were driven by the pressure of a toroidal magnetic field in a ''magnetic tower'' jet configuration. This scenario is characterized by the formation of a magnetically collimated plasma jet on the axis of a magnetic ''bubble'', confined by the ambient medium. The use of a radial metallic foil instead of the radial wire arrays employed in our previous work allows for the generation of episodic magnetic tower outflows which emerge periodically on timescales of ~30 ns. The subsequent magnetic bubbles propagate with velocities reaching ~300 km/s and interact with previous eruptions leading to the formation of shocks.

6 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Science

References in corpus (4)

• The evolution of magnetic tower jets in the laboratory
• Stellar Explosions by Magnetic Towers
• Magnetic Jets from Swirling Disks
• Supersonic radiatively cooled rotating flows and jets in the laboratory

Cited by in corpus (6)

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• The impact of the Hall effect on high energy density plasma jets
• Experimental Studies of Magnetically Driven Plasma Jets
• Persistent mysteries of jet engines, formation, propagation, and particle acceleration: have they been addressed experimentally?
• Cooling and Instabilities in Colliding Flows
• Morphology of Shocked Lateral Outflows in Colliding Hydrodynamic Flows