Theoretical and experimental study of supersonic gas jet targets for laser wakefield acceleration

This work reports a theoretical and experimental study of supersonic gas jets to be used as targets in laser wakefield acceleration. A comparison between theoretical and experimental results ismade in order to estimate the results of a de Laval nozzle manufactured in our laboratory, used to produce a N
2
gas target. The comparison between the results shows that Computational Fluid Dynamicssimulations are able todescribe the phenomena of the supersonic gas jet.