Design of a 3-D Printed Experimental Platform for Studying the Formation and Magnetization of Turbulent Plasma Jets

Astrophysical jets are ubiquitous structures, typically associated with a gravitational engine that generates axial flows from an accretion disk. Despite the wide range of shapes and properties, all astrophysical jets share extreme collimation and exceptional stability. It is often assumed that magnetic fields play an important role in such systems, though it is unclear at what strength they would begin to destabilize the jet. To explore the mechanisms at play, we propose to conduct a stability study of magnetized jets generated by pulsed-power drivers. Matching the key dimensionless parameters of plasma flows such as the Reynolds and magnetic Reynolds numbers, Mach number, and plasma beta, magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) dictates that any collimation and stability mechanisms found in the laboratory also take place inside astrophysical jets. Our experiment uses a 3-D printed quasi-axisymmetric load, driven by a 1-MA pulsed-power driver and capable of producing converging flows that transition into a collimated, magnetized plasma jet. With our setup, we may control two variables: the axial magnetic field and the azimuthal flows. We present results from simulations using the 3-D extended-MHD code PERSEUS, as well as preliminary experimental results using the COBRA pulsed-power driver. We show that the scaling parameters for our setup indeed lie within the regimes of astrophysical jets, but our initial experiment does not yet produce the desired collimated jets.