Micron-scale phenomena observed in a turbulent laser-produced plasma.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 33976145.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-22891-w and PMC identifier 8113596.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Turbulence is ubiquitous in the universe and in fluid dynamics. It influences a wide range of high energy density systems, from inertial confinement fusion to astrophysical-object evolution. Understanding this phenomenon is crucial, however, due to limitations in experimental and numerical methods in plasma systems, a complete description of the turbulent spectrum is still lacking. Here, we present the measurement of a turbulent spectrum down to micron scale in a laser-plasma experiment. We use an experimental platform, which couples a high power optical laser, an x-ray free-electron laser and a lithium fluoride crystal, to study the dynamics of a plasma flow with micrometric resolution (~1μm) over a large field of view (>1 mm<sup>2</sup>). After the evolution of a Rayleigh-Taylor unstable system, we obtain spectra, which are overall consistent with existing turbulent theory, but present unexpected features. This work paves the way towards a better understanding of numerous systems, as it allows the direct comparison of experimental results, theory and numerical simulations.