Laser-produced plasmas interaction with high pulsed magnetic field

Abstract

This work presents results of two experiments accomplished at the Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion (IPPLM) in Warsaw: (1) investigations of the influence of magnetic field on a laser-produced plasma in the presence or absence of the background plasma, (2) investigations of dynamics of laser-produced plasma in a strong magnetic field. The aim of experiment 1 (performed in collaboration with the Institute of Laser Physics (ILP) RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia) was laboratory simulation of depolarization and deflection of plasma streams drifting across magnetic field in geoplasma background. An Nd:glass laser (5 ns, 2 J) was used to produce the plasma inside Helmholtz coils . The diagnostics for studying the interaction processes were: ion collectors, Langmuir and magnetic probes and an image converter camera. We present a comparison of the effects investigated in that experiment with some phenomena occurring in the geoplasma. In experiment 2 the plasma was produced by means of a Nd:glass laser (1 ns, 10 J) focused on a solid target located in a single-turn coil . Plasma expansion was investigated with an automated interferometer along the magnetic field lines and perpendicular to these lines. From the interferograms, it has been revealed that the plasma stream has a clear asymmetry for caused by an unmagnetized ion Rayleigh-Taylor instability.