Laser interferometric measurement for astrophysics diagnostics on Sphinx

Summary form only given. Interferometric measurements were carried out on the Sphinx machine in order to determine the spatial and temporal electronic density distribution in plasma jets produced as a result of conical wire array implosions. The setup consists of a continuous solid state laser, a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and a high speed multi-frame CCD camera. Due to the long rise time current from the 1 μs LTD technology, jet formation and propagation occur on a large time scale, starting at 350 ns, and ending just before the load implosion at 750 ns. At this time, optical plasma jet length below the anode reaches more than 60 mm with an apparent velocity of 6 cm/us. The laser interferometric setup enables the capture of eight interferograms with 10 ns exposure time. A laser beam expander located at the entrance of the interferometer system increases the incident beam up to 50 mm ensuring full scanning of the region of interest. Results obtained so far are very promising and further studies are underway to optimize the data quality.