Plasma jet experiments in vacuum and in ambient medium using high energy lasers

Abstract

We present promising experimental results for laboratory astrophysics. These experiments were performed in France at the LULI2000 facility to study jet propagation in vacuum and in Japan at ILE using Gekko XII HIPER Laser for jet evolution in an ambient medium. A foam filled cone target was used to generate high velocity plasma jet, and a gas jet nozzle was used to produce the ambient medium. Using visible and X-ray diagnostics, we measured the jet parameters such as: density, temperature and velocity. We were able to determine experimentally the jet dimensionless quantities to compare with astrophysical objects.