Hydrodynamics of supercritical region in laser ablated plasmas

Abstract

The laser ablated plasma flow and subsequent plasma density profile in steep plasma temperature gradient in spherical geometry are studied. Using local flux-limited model of heat flow the effect of flux-inhibition on the hydrodynamics of plasma ablation zone is investigated. The radial variation of thermal flux through local flux-limited model with recently accepted numerical range of flux-limit ≈ 10% of the free streaming is in close agreement with Spitzer's classical thermal conduction reduced by about an order of magnitude which may be attributed to the presence of megagauss level self-generated magnetic fields as predicted earlier to interpret experimental observations on X-rays emission spectra.