Thermalization of the plasma arising during counter collision of high-energy plasma flows in a longitudinal magnetic field

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series 2021-02, Vol.1787 (1), p.12033
• Main Authors: Gavrilov, V V, Eskov, A G, Zhitlukhin, A M, Kochnev, D M, Pikuz, S A, Poznyak, I M, Ryazantsev, S N, Skobelev, I Yu, Toporkov, D A, Umrikhin, N M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1742-6588; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/1787/1/012033

This work is devoted to the study of thermalization of plasma created by head-on collisions of high-energy plasma flows in a longitudinal magnetic field of 0.5-2 T. Hydrodynamic flows contained the energy of 200 kJ with velocities from 2 × 107 to 4 × 107 cm/s and ion density from 2 × 1015 to 4 × 1015 cm−3 were created inside the 2MK-200 facility by two electrodynamic plasma accelerators equipped by a system of pulsed gas injection. Nitrogen, neon and their mixtures with hydrogen and deuterium were implemented as working gases. A process of plasma creating was investigated by near-wall magnetic probes situated in different parts of the interaction chamber. Temporal evolution of the plasma electron temperature had been traced by x-ray photodiodes covered by different filters. It was discovered that the plasma electron temperature changed insignificantly during 6-8 μs after it reached the maximum value, which means that it ionization state can be considered as quasi-stationary.