Properties of radiatively cooled supersonic plasma jets formed by ablation of thin Al foils driven by 1.4 MA, 250 ns current pulse are presented. The jets are highly collimated with half-opening angles of ~2°. Measurements of the flow velocity (~60 km/s) and plasma temperature (~15 eV) in the jet with Thomson scattering diagnostic give internal Mach number of M ~ 3, suggesting additional collimation of the jet by toroidal magnetic fields.

The formation of supersonic, radiatively cooled plasma jets with applications to laboratory astrophysics has been an active area of research on the MAGPIE generator. One of the ways of producing astrophysically-relevant jets in the laboratory is by using the ablation of plasma from a radial foil Z-pinch. In this configuration a ~1.4 MA, 250 ns current pulse is introduced into an aluminium disk with a thickness of 15 μm. The ablated plasma from the foil converges on the axis, producing a steady and collimated jet with a typical axial velocity of ~100 km/s. The setup allows for the addition of argon above the foil for jet-ambient interaction studies. The interaction is characterised by the formation of several shock features, which are presented and discussed from experimental data and numerical simulations.