Experimental Measurements and Numerical Simulations of Bow Shocks in Supersonics Plasma Jets*

Recent experiments on the University of New Mexico's HelCat Dual Source Plasma Device have focused on understanding the dynamics of bow shocks of supersonic (M=3-5) plasma jets with a cylindrical object placed inside the HelCat vacuum chamber to disrupt the jet flow and form a bow shock. The HelCat chamber allows for a variety of diagnostics including probes, high speed imaging and spectrometry on cm spatial scales and microsecond temporal scales. The chamber also allows for the jets to be launched into varying background conditions including orthogonal magnetic fields, helicon plasmas and gas backfills. Parallel to the experimental work, the Perseus extended MHD code has been used to run models of the global dynamics of the shock experiment. This presentation will focus on the experimental measurements made so far as well as some of the insights gained using the numerical modelling in Perseus.