Experimental Measurements of Ion Heating in Collisional Plasma Shocks and Interpenetrating Supersonic Plasma Flows

Abstract

We present time-resolved measurements of ion heating due to collisional plasma shocks and interpenetrating supersonic plasma flows, which are formed by the oblique merging of two coaxial-gun-formed plasma jets. Our study was repeated using four jet species: N, Ar, Kr, and Xe. In conditions with small interpenetration between jets, the observed peak ion temperature Ti is consistent with the predictions of collisional plasma-shock theory, showing a substantial elevation of Ti above the electron temperature Te and also the subsequent decrease of Ti on the classical ion-electron temperature-equilibration time scale. In conditions of significant interpenetration between jets, such that shocks do not apparently form, the observed peak Ti is still appreciable and greater than Te, but much lower than that predicted by collisional plasma-shock theory. Experimental results are compared with multi-fluid plasma simulations.

arXiv comment6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters (2018)

References in corpus (13)

• A Textbook Example of a Bow Shock in the Merging Galaxy Cluster 1E0657-56
• Cosmological Shock Waves and Their Role in the Large Scale Structure of the Universe
• Observation of magnetic field generation via the Weibel instability in interpenetrating plasma flows
• Filamentation instability of counter-streaming laser-driven plasmas
• Experimental characterization of railgun-driven supersonic plasma jets motivated by high energy density physics applications
• Experimental characterization of the stagnation layer between two obliquely merging supersonic plasma jets
• Experimental evidence for collisional shock formation via two obliquely merging supersonic plasma jets
• Deciphering the Kinetic Structure of Multi-Ion Plasma Shocks
• Ion Species Stratification Within Strong Shocks in Two-Ion Plasmas
• Experiment to Form and Characterize a Section of a Spherically Imploding Plasma Liner
• Laboratory plasma physics experiments using merging supersonic plasma jets
• Experimental characterization of a transition from collisionless to collisional interaction between head-on-merging supersonic plasma jets
• Multi-chord fiber-coupled interferometer with a long coherence length laser

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Retrospective of the ARPA-E ALPHA fusion program
• Experimental characterization of a section of a spherically imploding plasma liner formed by merging hypersonic plasma jets
• Experimental Measurements of Ion Diffusion Coefficients and Heating in a Multi-Ion-Species Plasma Shock
• Observation of Shock-Front Separation in Multi-Ion-Species Collisional Plasma Shocks
• Experimental Study of Ion Heating in Obliquely Merging Hypersonic Plasma Jets
• Characterization of fast magnetosonic waves driven by compact toroid plasma injection along a magnetic field