X-Ray Spectral Diagnostics of the Interaction Region of a Supersonic Plasma Flow with a Gas Wall in Laboratory Experiments with Astrophysical Similarity

The article deals with the possibility of using high-resolution imaging X-ray spectroscopy to study the parameters of the interaction region of a laser-plasma aluminium supersonic flow (jet) with an argon gas wall in a model experiment with astrophysical similarity to Herbig–Haro objects. Experiments of this kind are promising for the realisation with modern nanosecond laser complexes with a pulse energy of several tens of J up to several kJ (intensity Ilas ~ 1012–1014 W/cm2) and can extend the understanding of the processes taking place in the space environment as well as verify existing theoretical models. The modelling of the laboratory object was carried out in 2 stages—first the macroscopic properties of the object were calculated using a hydrodynamic simulation, and then the calculated spatio-temporal profiles of the macroscopic parameters were fed into a non-stationary kinetic code, which was used to model the radiative properties of the process under consideration. It is shown that the simulated X-ray spectrograms allow to estimate the plasma parameters in the interaction region of the laser-plasma jet with the gas cloud based on the relative intensities of the spectral lines of multiply charged argon ions and the location of this region based on the spatial distribution of the argon ion glow.