Browsing by Author "Veloso, Felipe"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Refractive optical measurements on the Llampudken generator
    (AMER INST PHYSICS, 2006) Suzuki, Francisco; Veloso, Felipe; Molina, Francisco; Mitchell, Ian; Chuaqui, Hernan; Aliaga Rossel, Raul; Favre, Mario; Wyndham, Edmund; HerreraVelazquez, JJE
    Experiments with two different configurations of dense z-pinches have been carried out on the Llampudken generator with the objective of investigating the time evolution of the discharges. These configurations were studied with refractive optical measurements using the second harmonic of a Nd:YAG laser (10 ns FVVM lambda=532 run). The Llampudken generator delivered a pulse current of 450 kA with a 260 ns rise time. Refractive optical measurements with schlieren diagnostics were made using an optical system which provided two frames per discharge. The original beam was split into two separate beams with perpendicular polarizations using a polarizer beam splitter and an extra path length was introduced into one of the beams delaying it with respect to the other. The path through the discharge chamber was equal for both beams therefore providing identical views of the plasma at two different times. The images were recorded on 35mm cameras using suitably orientated polarizers to select the corresponding beam. As a complementary diagnostic technique, MCP cameras with exposure time of 2 ns were used to obtain VUV images of the loads. Preliminary results of these experiments will be presented and discussed.
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    Shock interactions between plasma jets from conical wire array Z-pinches and laser-produced plasma plume
    (2022) Izquierdo, Luisa; Veloso, Felipe; Valenzuela, Julio; Escalona, Miguel; Oportus, Diego; Favre, Mario
    The interaction of a supersonic plasma jet outflow with a background laser-produced plasma plume is experimentally studied. The aim of these studies is to provide an experimental platform to study jet-ambient interactions in an environment relevant to high energy density physics scenarios. The jet outflow is produced by a conical wire array Z-pinch composed of 16 aluminum wires (40 mu m diameter each) acting as load of the Llampudken generator (-400kA, -350 ns). The laser plasma plume is produced by focusing a 2 x 1010 W/cm2 laser pulse onto an aluminum target. Our experimental results show that in the absence of laser plasma plume, there is no significant photoionized plasma from the target that interacts with the jet outflow. On the contrary, when combining both plasma sources, a new structure appears at the interaction region. The thickness of this structure is of the order of the inter-particle ion-ion mean free path, which was calculated for a wide range of parameters for each plasma. These results indicate the presence of a collisional shock layer created after the interaction. Further details and potential applications are shown and discussed.
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    Study of Shock Formation Parameters With Drive Conditions in Magnetically Accelerated Plasma Flows
    (2024) Bott-Suzuki, Simon C.; Valdivia, Maria Pia; Banasek, Jacob T.; Cordaro, Samuel W.; Truong, Ann; Hu, Hanyu; Wu, Chin-Chou; Dilworth, Noah; Kusse, B. R.; Hammer, D. A.; Lavine, Eric Sander; Potter, W. M.; Greenly, J. B.; Veloso, Felipe
    We present experimental data regarding the formation of high-energy-density shocks in magnetically accelerated plasma flows using pulsed power drivers. We quantify the flow velocity and temperature of the ablated plasma using optical Thomson scattering and gated emission imaging across two different generators. We show that, regardless of the drive parameters, the plasma flows show continuous acceleration over centimeter spatial scales, in line with trends in published simulation work. When stationary targets are placed in these supersonic flows, bow-shock formation is observed at all drive parameters in a range of materials. In the higher density flow generated on the 1-MA COBRA generator at Cornell University, heating of the upstream flow ahead of the shock is observed and quantified, which is not observed at the lower density flow on the 0.2-MA Bertha driver at UC San Diego. When combined with previous work on the XP generator at Cornell, we can show that these three experimental setups allow control of the effect of radiation loss and upstream absorption on the formation of the bow shock.
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    Temperature Inhibition of Plasma-Driven Methane Conversion in DBD Systems
    (2023) Akintola, Ibukunoluwa; Rivera-Castro, Gerardo; Yang, Jinyu; Secrist, Jeffrey; Hicks, Jason C.; Veloso, Felipe; Go, David B.
    Low-temperature non-thermal plasmas produce highly reactive chemical environments made up of electrons, ions, radicals, and vibrationally excited molecules. These reactive species, when combined with catalysts, can help drive thermodynamically unfavorable chemical reactions at low temperatures and atmospheric pressure. The conversion of methane (CH4) to produce other value-added chemicals is a good model system because of its applicability to a wide range of industries. To effectively create these plasma catalytic systems, a fundamental understanding of the plasma-phase chemistry alone is imperative. While there have been many studies on methane plasmas and how certain operating conditions (i.e., gas composition and power) affect the plasma, there is limited understanding on how changing bulk reaction temperature affects the plasma properties and ensuing plasma chemistry. In this work, we use a dielectric barrier discharge to investigate the effects of temperature on the reaction chemistry and the plasma's electrical properties in various methane-gas mixtures. Results show that increasing temperature leads to a reduction in methane conversion as well as changes to both the gas and dielectric material pre-breakdown, which manifests itself in temperature-dependent electrical properties of the plasma. Experiments at various temperatures and power show a positive correlation between key electrical plasma properties (average charge and lifetime per filament) and the measured methane conversion as a function of temperature.
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    The formation of ring shaped laser plasmas on a metal surface
    (AMER INST PHYSICS, 2006) Veloso, Felipe; Chuaqui, Hernan; Aliaga Rossel, Raul; Favre, Mario; Mitchell, Ian; Wyndham, Edmund; HerreraVelazquez, JJE
    A method to produce ring plasmas on a metal surface is presented. The ring plasma is produced by focusing a laser pulse into an annular shape. This is achieved by using a combination of a converging lens and an axicon. The axicon is a rotationally symmetric prism. The radius of the focused ring is determined by the base angle of the axicon, and the focal length of the converging lens. The experiments are performed on a titanium surface, using a 0.18 J, 10 ns, 1064 nm pulsed, from a Nd:YAG laser. The background gas is hydrogen, at pressures in the atmospheric range. The ring structure was measured using schlieren imaging and Mach Zehnder interferometry. The expansion velocities of the laser-produced plasma in the background gas were measured in two directions; parallel and perpendicular to the metallic surface. Characteristic values are 5-9(.)10(3) m/s, for the ring radius expansion, parallel to the surface, and 1.0-1.7(.)10(4) m/s, perpendicular to the surface. Characteristic electron densities of the order of 10(18) cm(-3) were measured, with hollow radial profiles. The temperature of the plasma was estimated to be between 0.1 and 0.4 eV. This ring plasma is used as precursor plasma to achieve a hollow gas embedded z-pinch.
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    X-ray emission from copper X-pinches driven at a current rate of similar to 1kA/ns
    (ELSEVIER, 2021) Vescovi, Milenko; Veloso, Felipe; Valenzuela, Julio; Favre, Mario
    A characterization of Cu X-pinches experiments driven at current rates similar to 1kA/ns is presented. The emission of two bursts of X-rays associated with hot-spot formation and electron beam-target mechanism are identified. The first burst, associated with the central hot-spot, appears consistently at currents in the range (154 +/- 20) kA, with time correlated noticiable dips in the current derivative signal, which indicate sudden changes in load impedance. This first burst emits photons pulses of similar to 1-2 ns width and with source sizes ranging between 50 and 150 mu m with emission in the 2-5 keV energy range combined with photons in the similar to 8-9 keV range. The second burst, associated with electron beam-target mechanism, emits longer pulses of tens of nanoseconds, with source sizes larger than similar to 0.75 mm and emission concentrated in energies >5 keV, reaching up to 9 keV or more. Spectroscopic data shows the presence of K-shell line emissions of Cu XXVII and Cu XXVIII, which combined with PrismSpect simulations indicate a electron temperature of similar to 850 eV with an ion density of 10(22) cm(-3). Further details and analysis of the X-pinch plasma and its possible applications are presented and discussed.
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    $Z$-Pinch Interferometry Analysis With the Fourier-Based TNT Code
    (2024) Valdivia, Maria Pia; Pérez-Callejo, Gabriel; Izquierdo Gonzalez, Luisa Fernanda; Veloso, Felipe; Truong, Ann; Hu, Hanyu; Dilworth, Noah; Bott-Suzuki, Simon C.; Bouffetier, Victorien
    We present the analysis of interferometry diagnostics with the user-friendly Talbot Numerical Tool (TNT), a Fourier-based postprocessing code that enables real-time assessment of plasma systems. TNT performance was explored with visible and infrared interferometry in pulsed-power-drivenZ-pinch configurations to expand its capabilities beyond Talbot X-ray interferometry in the high-intensity laser environment. TNT enabled accurate electron density characterization ofmagnetically driven plasma flows and shocks through phaseretrieval methods that did not require data modification or masking. TNT demonstrated enhanced resolution, detecting below 4% fringe shift, which corresponds to 8.7 × 1015 cm−2 within 28 µm, approaching the laser probing system limit.TNT was tested against a well-known interferometry analysis software, delivering an average resolving power nearly ten times better (∼28 µm versus ∼210 µm) when resolving plasmaablation features. TNT demonstrated higher sensitivity when probing sharp electron density gradients in supersonic shocks. A maximum electron areal density of 4.1 × 1017 cm−2 was measured in the shocked plasma region, and a minimum electron density detection of ∼1.0 × 1015 cm−2 was achieved. When probing colliding plasma flows, the calculations of the effective