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Collisionless shock experiments with lasers and observation of Weibel instabilitiesa)

Authors :
H. Takabe
James Ross
B. B. Pollock
M. C. Levy
C. K. Li
Hans Rinderknecht
D. Q. Lamb
H.-S. Park
Channing Huntington
Anatoly Spitkovsky
Petros Tzeferacos
David Turnbull
R. D. Petrasso
Youichi Sakawa
Carolyn Kuranz
Taichi Morita
Jena Meinecke
Dustin Froula
Nathan Kugland
Michael Rosenberg
R. P. Drake
Frederico Fiuza
Dmitri Ryutov
S. V. Weber
M. Koenig
Bruce Remington
Alex Zylstra
Gianluca Gregori
Source :
Physics of Plasmas. 22:056311
Publication Year :
2015
Publisher :
AIP Publishing, 2015.

Abstract

Astrophysical collisionless shocks are common in the universe, occurring in supernova remnants, gamma ray bursts, and protostellar jets. They appear in colliding plasma flows when the mean free path for ion-ion collisions is much larger than the system size. It is believed that such shocks could be mediated via the electromagnetic Weibel instability in astrophysical environments without pre-existing magnetic fields. Here, we present laboratory experiments using high-power lasers and investigate the dynamics of high-Mach-number collisionless shock formation in two interpenetrating plasma streams. Our recent proton-probe experiments on Omega show the characteristic filamentary structures of the Weibel instability that are electromagnetic in nature with an inferred magnetization level as high as ∼1% [C. M. Huntington et al., “Observation of magnetic field generation via the weibel instability in interpenetrating plasma flows,” Nat. Phys. 11, 173–176 (2015)]. These results imply that electromagnetic instabilities are significant in the interaction of astrophysical conditions.

Details

ISSN :
10897674 and 1070664X
Volume :
22
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Physics of Plasmas
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........e1044544f48f5d6cd916d397bab3c1dc