Generation of shocks between laser-produced plasma and jets emitted from conical wire array z-pinches.

To study interaction of plasmas in high energy density (HED) environments, we have developed an experimental platform to generate and characterize shocks under controlled conditions. In this regard, a plasma jet emitted by a conical wire array Z-pinch interacts with a background laser-produced plasma plume generating an interaction region between them. In the experiments, the jet is produced by a conical wire array Z-pinch acting as load of the Llampudken generator (~400kA, ~350ns), whereas the laser plasma is produced by focusing a 20 GW/cm² Nd:YAG laser pulse onto a target located above the interelectrode region of the driver. Time-resolved laser interferometry (532nm, 6ns FWHM) aligned with the target surface is used to compute the electron density. When using aluminium in both wire array and laser target, our experimental results show that in the absence of laser-produced plasma plume, there is no significant photoionized plasma from the target that interact with the jet stream. On the contrary, in the presence of both plasma sources, a new structure appears at the interaction region. The thickness of this new structure agrees with ion-ion mean free path calculated for a wide range of parameters for each plasma. This result suggests the presence of a collisionally-mediated shock layer created after the interaction. Further details and potential applications will be shown and discussed.