Abstract
We present a study of perpendicular subcritical shocks in a collisional laboratory plasma. Shocks are produced by placing obstacles into the supermagnetosonic outflow from an inverse wire array z pinch. We demonstrate the existence of subcritical shocks in this regime and find that secondary shocks form in the downstream. Detailed measurements of the subcritical shock structure confirm the absence of a hydrodynamic jump. We calculate the classical (Spitzer) resistive diffusion length and show that it is approximately equal to the shock width. We measure little heating across the shock ( of the ion kinetic energy) which is consistent with an absence of viscous dissipation.
1 More- Received 19 January 2022
- Revised 14 October 2022
- Accepted 25 October 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.225001
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