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Pinhole/Coded Aperture Imaging of Transient Suprathermal X-rays From A Magnetohydrodynamically-Driven Laboratory Plasma Jet

Presentation #147.07 in the session Laboratory Astrophysics (LAD) Division Meeting: iPoster Session.

Published onJun 29, 2022
Pinhole/Coded Aperture Imaging of Transient Suprathermal X-rays From A Magnetohydrodynamically-Driven Laboratory Plasma Jet

Transient ~6 keV x-ray bursts having a duration of about one microsecond have been observed from a magnetohydrodynamically-driven, 100 kA current-carrying laboratory plasma jet with an initial diameter of a few cm, a length increasing from a few cm to 10s of cm in around 40 μs, and a nominal temperature around 2 eV. Because the collision mean free path is estimated to be much smaller than the jet dimensions, acceleration of particles to ~6 keV was not expected. In order to investigate the origin of these x-ray bursts, a 1-dimensional, PIN-diode-based x-ray camera has been developed. Because the x-ray bursts are usually detected when the plasma jet column is choked by ripples due to Rayleigh-Taylor instability, we suspect the x-ray bursts originate from the choked jet column. Even though the choked jet column is 10s of cm offset from the electrode that launches the plasma jet, most pinhole and coded aperture x-ray images taken so far only show x-ray sources near the electrode. Nevertheless, a localized x-ray source roughly 30 cm away from the electrode has been recently seen on a few pinhole x-ray images. This rare x-ray source could potentially be from the expected choked plasma jet, and we are hoping to confirm that by comparing x-ray images and visible light images of the plasma jet. This work is supported by NSF Grant 2105492 and AFOSR Grant 13334561.

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