Laboratory Astrophysics and Collimated Stellar Outflows: The Production of Radiatively Cooled Hypersonic Plasma Jets

TL;DR

This paper reports on laboratory experiments creating highly supersonic, radiatively cooled plasma jets using conical wire array setups, providing insights into astrophysical jet formation and stability.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel experimental method to generate and study radiatively cooled, collimated plasma jets relevant to astrophysics, bridging laboratory and cosmic phenomena.

Findings

Highly supersonic jets (M~20) are produced with significant radiative cooling.

Jet collimation is achieved via a standing conical shock mechanism.

Experiments can inform astrophysical jet stability and interaction studies.

Abstract

We present first results of astrophysically relevant experiments where highly supersonic plasma jets are generated via conically convergent flows. The convergent flows are created by electrodynamic acceleration of plasma in a conical array of fine metallic wires (a modification of the wire array Z-pinch). Stagnation of plasma flow on the axis of symmetry forms a standing conical shock effectively collimating the flow in the axial direction. This scenario is essentially similar to that discussed by Canto\' ~and collaborators as a purely hydrodynamic mechanism for jet formation in astrophysical systems. Experiments using different materials (Al, Fe and W) show that a highly supersonic ($M\sim 20$), well-collimated jet is generated when the radiative cooling rate of the plasma is significant. We discuss scaling issues for the experiments and their potential use for numerical code verification. The experiments also may allow direct exploration of astrophysically relevant issues such as collimation, stability and jet-cloud interactions.