Recent Experiments on the MAGPIE Pulsed Power Generator.
POSTER
Abstract
We present an overview of recent work on the MAGPIE pulsed power generator at Imperial College London. We use a suite of spatially and temporally resolved laser probing diagnostics, including interferometry, Thomson scattering and Faraday rotation imaging to diagnose high energy density, supersonic plasma flows which are generated by the ablation of plasma from wire arrays and radial foils or are driven using the X-Ray flux from stagnated wire array Z-Pinches. We study a variety of astrophysically relevant phenomena such as hypersonic jets; rotating plasmas; magnetic reconnection; the formation of bow shocks around magnetised and unmagnetised obstacles; and the dynamics of photoionization fronts.