2013/06/06 by Chris Orban, Orban, Chris, Milad Fatenejad +7
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Molecular Physics #FOS: Physical sciences #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #Laser-induced spectroscopy and plasma #Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1306.1584
openalex publication_date 2013/06/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The potential for laser-produced plasmas to yield fundamental insights into\nhigh energy density physics (HEDP) and deliver other useful applications can\nsometimes be frustrated by uncertainties in modeling the properties and\nexpansion of these plasmas using radiation-hydrodynamics codes. In an effort to\novercome this and to corroborate the accuracy of the HEDP capabilities recently\nadded to the publicly available FLASH radiation-hydrodynamics code, we present\ndetailed comparisons of FLASH results to new and previously published results\nfrom the HYDRA code used extensively at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.\nWe focus on two very different problems of interest: (1) an Aluminum slab\nirradiated by 15.3 and 76.7 mJ of "pre-pulse" laser energy and (2) a mm-long\ntriangular groove cut in an Aluminum target irradiated by a rectangular laser\nbeam. Because this latter problem bears a resemblance to astrophysical jets,\nGrava et al., Phys. Rev. E, 78, (2008) performed this experiment and compared\ndetailed x-ray interferometric measurements of electron number densities to\nHYDRA simulations. Thus, the former problem provides an opportunity for\ncode-to-code comparison, while the latter provides an opportunity for both\ncode-to-code comparison and validation. Despite radically different schemes for\ndetermining the computational mesh, and different equation of state and opacity\nmodels, the HYDRA and FLASH codes yield results that are in excellent agreement\nfor both problems and with the experimental data for the latter. Having\nvalidated the FLASH code in this way, we use the code to further investigate\nthe formation of the jet seen in the Grava et al. (2008) experiment and discuss\nits relation to the Wan et al. (1997) experiment at the NOVA laser.\n