Magnetized laboratory plasma jets: experiment and simulation.

Experiments involving radial foils on a 1 MA, 100 ns current driver can be used to study the ablation of thin foils and liners, produce extreme conditions relevant to laboratory astrophysics, and aid in computational code validation. This research focuses on the initial ablation phase of a 20 μm Al foil (8111 alloy), in a radial configuration, driven by Cornell University's COBRA pulsed power generator. In these experiments ablated surface plasma (ASP) on the top side of the foil and a strongly collimated axial plasma jet are observed developing midway through the current rise.

A torquing shearing interferometer for cylindrical wire array experiments.

In standard shearing interferometry, a single probing beam passes through a perturbing medium and is then split into two beams. A linear shift results in an overlap, an interference, and a fringe pattern yielding the perturbing medium density profile. The probing beam usually needs to be larger than the perturbing medium so that part of it passes through a well separated low density region.