Studying Magnetic-Pressure-Driven Bow Shocks at OMEGA

ORAL

Abstract

We present data and analysis from a campaign to study astrophysically relevant, magnetic-pressure-driven bow shocks at the OMEGA laser facility. The system consists of a slow, low-density plasma flow impinging on the external azimuthal magnetic field around a current-carrying wire. The spatially resolved optical Imaging Thomson Scattering diagnostic provides quantitative measurements of electron number density and temperature across a shock. Proton images also indicate the formation of an MHD shock at a standoff distance from the wire. We simulate the experiment using the FLASH code and compare these results to the data.

*This work is funded by the DOE, through the NNSA Center of Excellence under grant number DE-NA0003869, the NNSA-DP and SC-OFES Joint Program in HEDLP, grant number DE-NA0002956, the NLUF Program and Rice University, grant number R19071, NLUF Program, grant number DE-NA0002719, and through the LLE, University of Rochester by the NNSA/OICF under Cooperative Agreement numbers DE-NA0001944 and DE-NA0003856.

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Authors

  • Joseph Levesque

    • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  • Carolyn Kuranz

    • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  • Rachel Young

    • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  • William Gray

    • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  • Matthew Trantham

    • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  • Sallee Klein

    • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  • Gennady Fiksel

    • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  • Andy Liao

    • Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Patrick Hartigan

    • William Marsh Rice University

  • Mario Manuel

    • General Atomics

  • Joseph Katz

    • Laboratory for Laser Energetics

  • Chikang Li

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Andrew Birkel

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Petros Tzeferacos

    • University of Chicago