Preliminary characterization of a laser-generated plasma sheet

We present the results from recent experiments to create a flowing plasma sheet. Two groups of three laser beams with nominally 1.5 kJ of energy per group were focused to separate pointing locations, driving a shock into a wedge target. As the shock breaks out of the wedge, the plasma is focused on center, creating a sheet of plasma. Measurements at 60 ns indicate the plasma sheet has propagated 2825 microns with an average velocity of 49 microns/ns. These experiments follow previous experiments [Krauland et al. 2013], which are aimed at studying similar physics as that found in the hot spot region of cataclysmic variables. Krauland et al. created a flowing plasma, which represents the flowing plasma from the secondary star. This flow interacted with a stationary object, which represented the disk around the white dwarf. A reverse shock is a shock formed when a freely expanding plasma encounters an obstacle. Reverse shocks can be generated by a blast wave propagating through a medium. They can also be found in binary star systems where the flowing gas from a companion star interacts with the accretion disk of the primary star.