New type of laser-plasma experiments to simulate an extreme and global impact of giant coronal mass ejections onto earth' magnetosphere*

Abstract

The goals, technical approach and first results of a new-type Laser-Plasma experiment AMEX for the simulation of over-compression effect of the Earth' magnetosphere by Giant Coronal Mass Ejections are described. Parameters of large-scale KI-1 facility of ILP with kJ-laser provide such values of dimensionless criteria which are in the range of very rare and enormous Solar flares that could cause a shift of magnetopause from the usual distance of 10RE down to ∼ (2-3)RE. These extreme ‘Artificial Magnetosphere’ states with highly compressed dipole field could result in world-wide damage phenomena in various networks and its physics could be explored in laboratory only by using of compact dipoles with a large moment. In a series of experiments with a variable magnetic moment and plasma blobs of effective energy up to 500 J an important role of plasma instabilities at magnetopause was revealed. The data on the magnetopause shape and stand-off size show a good correspondence both to general magnetospheric models and to expected scaling of ‘Artificial Magnetosphere’.