Progress towards collisionless shock experiments in a magnetised, pulsed power-driven ambient plasma

Magnetised collisionless shocks are ubiquitous in astrophysical plasmas and have been shown to accelerate energetic particles. The collisionless nature of these shocks raises many interesting questions including how energy is partitioned and how particles are accelerated to high energies [2]. This is an active field of research which includes scaled laboratory experiments. Significant progress has been made in recent years [3], however, one of the main challenges for laboratory experiments is sustaining shocks for long enough that these processes can be observed.

We present first steps towards studying collisionless shocks by laser driven ablation in the large scale magnetised ambient plasma produced by a pulsed power-driven exploding wire array. The scale of the magnetised plasma exceeds what has previously been achievable on laser-driven platforms and will allow shock propagation over larger distances. We present data from experiments carried out at the MAGPIE facility and discuss this progress in the context of the open questions mentioned above.

[2] D. Caprioli et al. ApJ. 783(2):91, (2014)

[3] D. B. Schaeffer et al. PRL. 122:245001 (2019)