Interpenetration and stagnation in colliding laser plasmas

We have investigated plasma stagnation and interaction effects in colliding laser-produced plasmas. For generating colliding plasmas, two split laser beams were line-focused onto a hemi-circular target and the seed plasmas so produced were allowed to expand in mutually orthogonal directions. This experimental setup forced the expanding seed plasmas to come to a focus at the center of the chamber. The interpenetration and stagnation of plasmas of candidate fusion wall materials, viz., carbon and tungsten, and other materials, viz., aluminum, and molybdenum were investigated in this study. Fast-gated imaging, Faraday cup ion analysis, and optical emission spectroscopy were used for diagnosing seed and colliding plasma plumes. Our results show that high-Z target (W, Mo) plasma ions interpenetrate each other, while low-Z (C, Al) plasmas stagnate at the collision plane. For carbon seed plasmas, an intense stagnation was observed resulting in longer plasma lifetime; in addition, the stagnation layer was found to be rich with C-2 dimers. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.