Feasibility study of a compact and multi-gas supersonic plasma jet for nuclear astrophysics and space research

Abstract

Supersonic plasma jet targets can improve the present knowledge on low energy nuclear reaction cross sections allowing to study electron screening effects. They could also be employed both in the preliminary tests of space vehicles thermal protection systems and in the validation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) evaluations of hot exotic gases. This common interest between nuclear astrophysics and space research led to a joint effort between the European Recoil Separator for Nuclear Astrophysics collaboration of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics and the Italian Aerospace Research Center (CIRA) to develop an innovative, compact and multi-gas supersonic plasma jet setup. In this work we present the characterization of a test supersonic cold jet target, performed with ion beam analysis techniques, as benchmark for the validation of the CFD code NExT developed by CIRA. Being NExT outputs in agreement within 5% with experimental data, we employed it together with the software CEA of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration to design setups to be employed in both nuclear astrophysics and space re-entry research fields. We finally provide an overview of the plasma technologies to be employed in the construction of this supersonic plasma jet, aiming for a good balance of costs and performances. A 200 kW plasma arch torch, being also commercially available, was found to be a good option for both nuclear astrophysics and space re-entry experiments in small laboratories: for the first, a 20% of ionization may be reached with still an adequate target thickness (∼1017nuclei/cm2), while for the latter the most energetic scenario could be reproduced.