Schlieren Imaging Diagnostic for a Collisionless Shock Experiment

A schlieren imaging diagnostic has been designed and constructed to diagnose the properties of astrophysically-relevant collisionless shocks in colliding plasma jets. This system has been designed to capture electron density changes as small as 10\% over millimeter length scales in $\sim 1$--10~eV hydrogen plasmas at $10^{14}$~cm$^{-3}$ density. The diagnostic consists of a 1.064~$\mu$m Nd:YAG illumination system and a megapixel imaging camera. The layout is a Z-configuration for compactness, with 20~cm diameter mirrors to enable a relatively wide imaging area. We present preliminary results from oblique and head-on jet merging experiments at densities in the $10^{14}$ to $10^{17}$~cm$^{-3}$ range.