High-power laser experiment forming a supercritical collisionless shock in a magnetized uniform plasma at rest

Abstract

We present a new experimental method to generate quasi-perpendicular supercritical magnetized collisionless shocks. In our experiment, ambient nitrogen (N) plasma is at rest and well-magnetized, and it has uniform mass density. The plasma is pushed by laser-driven ablation aluminum (Al) plasma. Streaked optical pyrometry and spatially resolved laser collective Thomson scattering clarify structures of plasma density and temperatures, which are compared with one-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. It is indicated that just after the laser irradiation, the Al plasma is magnetized by a self-generated Biermann battery field, and the plasma slaps the incident N plasma. The compressed external field in the N plasma reflects N ions, leading to counter-streaming magnetized N flows. Namely we identify the edge of the reflected N ions. Such interacting plasmas form a magnetized collisionless shock.

arXiv comment17 pages, 12 figures, 1 table. Physical Review E, in press

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• High-power laser experiment on developing supercritical shock propagating in homogeneously magnetized plasma of ambient gas origin
• Detection of current-sheet and bipolar ion flows in a self-generated antiparallel magnetic field of laser-produced plasmas for magnetic reconnection research
• Ion-acoustic feature of collective Thomson scattering in non-equilibrium two-stream plasmas
• Criteria for ion acceleration in laboratory magnetized quasi-perpendicular collisionless shocks: when are 2D simulations enough?
• Electron density structure measurements with scattered intense laser beam
• Biermann-battery driven magnetized collisionless shock precursors in laser produced plasmas