A Laboratory Investigation of Supersonic Clumpy Flows: Experimental Design and Theoretical Analysis

We present a design for high energy density laboratory experiments studying the interaction of hypersonic shocks with a large number of inhomogeneities. These ``clumpy'' flows are relevant to a wide variety of astrophysical environments including the evolution of molecular clouds, outflows from young stars, Planetary Nebulae and Active Galactic Nuclei. The experiment consists of a strong shock (driven by a pulsed power machine or a high intensity laser) impinging on a region of randomly placed plastic rods. We discuss the goals of the specific design and how they are met by specific choices of target components. An adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic code is used to analyze the design and establish a predictive baseline for the experiments. The simulations confirm the effectiveness of the design in terms of articulating the differences between shocks propagating through smooth and clumpy environments. In particular, we find significant differences between the shock propagation speeds in a clumpy medium compared to a smooth one with the same average density. The simulation results are of general interest for foams in both inertial confinement fusion and laboratory astrophysics studies. Our results highlight the danger of using average properties of inhomogeneous astrophysical environments when comparing timescales for critical processes such as shock crossing and gravitational collapse times.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal. For additional information, including simulation animations and the pdf and ps files of the paper with embedded high-quality images, see http://pas.rochester.edu/~wm

Charged-Particle Probing of X-Ray-Driven Inertial-Fusion Implosions

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Effect of a rigid nonpolar solute on the splay, bend elastic constants and on rotational viscosity coefficient of 4-4^\prime -n-octyl-cyanobiphenyl

The effect of a rigid nonpolar non-mesogenic solute, ``biphenyl'' which is (C_{6}H_{5}-C_{6}H_{5}), on the splay and bend elastic constants and on the rotational viscosity coefficient of (4,4^{\prime})-n-octyl-cyano biphenyl (8CB) is reported. The experiments involve the measurement of voltage dependence of capacitance of a cell filled with the mixture. Anomalous behavior of both (K_{11}) and (\Delta \epsilon) near the (N-S_{A}) transition have been observed.Comment: RevTeX - 8 figures. Accepted to be published in Physical Review