Recent Laboratory Astrophysics Experiments at LULI

Abstract

At the LULI laboratory we developed since a few years a program on several topics related to laboratory astrophysics: high velocity jets, shock waves in density gradients, collisionless shocks, and radiative shocks (RS). In this paper, the latest experiments related to RS’s obtained on the new LULI2000 facility and on GEKKOXII are presented. In particular a strong radiative precursor was observed and its time evolution compared with 2D radiative simulations. The second topic developed at LULI is related to plasma jets which are often observed in Young Stellar Objects (YSO), during their phase of bulk contraction. They interact with the interstellar medium resulting in emission lobes, including the so-called bow shocks. The objective of our experiments was to generate plasma jets propagating through an ambient medium. To this aim, we developed a new target design (a foam filled cone ended with a “nozzle”) in order to generate a plasma jet. A jet-like structure was observed and its time evolution studied by varying the foam density. Interaction with ambient medium was recently performed showing growing instabilities for low density gas.