Laboratory simulation of astrophysical jets within facilities of Plasma Focus type

TL;DR

This paper reports on laboratory experiments using Plasma Focus facilities to simulate astrophysical jets, focusing on jet stabilization mechanisms and their potential to model YSO jets for understanding astrophysical plasma ejections.

Contribution

It introduces new experimental regimes for creating stable, collimated plasma jets in laboratory settings, advancing the simulation of astrophysical jet phenomena.

Findings

Narrowly collimated plasma jets achieved up to 100 cm.

Dimensionless parameters suggest suitability for YSO jet modeling.

Controlled gas distributions influence jet stability and propagation.

Abstract

A laboratory simulation of astrophysical processes is one of the intensively developed areas of plasma physics. A new series of experiments has been launched recently on the Plasma Focus type facility in NRC Kurchatov Institute. The main goal is to study the mechanisms of the jet stabilization, due to which it can propagate at distances much greater than their transverse dimensions. The experiments with stationary gas filling revealed regimes in which a narrowly collimated plasma jet was formed, the head of which was no wider than several centimeters at jet propagation distances of up to 100 cm. The PF-1000 (IFPiLM, Warsaw, Poland) and KPF-4 (SFTI, Sukhum, Abkhazia) experiments are aimed at creating profiled initial gas distributions to control the conditions of plasma jet propagation in the ambient plasma. Estimations of the dimensionless parameters, i.e. the Mach, Reynolds, and Peclet numbers which were achieved during the experiments, showed that the PF-facilities can be used for the YSO jets modelling. The future experiments, which can allow one to understand the nature of the stable plasma ejections observed in many astrophysical sources, are discussed.