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.

5 pages, 4 figures are included. This is the original submitted version of the manuscript to be published in Nature Physics

References in corpus (5)

• X-ray Spectral Study of the Photoionized Stellar Wind in Vela~X-1
• High Resolution Spectroscopy of the X-ray Photoionized Wind in Cygnus X-3 with the Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer
• The Ionized Stellar Wind in Vela X-1 During Eclipse
• Soft X-ray emission lines from photoionized accretion discs: constraints on their strength and width
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• Fast collisional electron heating and relaxation in thin foils driven by a circularly polarized ultraintense short-pulse laser
• A comparison of time-dependent Cloudy astrophysical code simulations with experimental X-ray spectra from keV laser-generated argon plasmas