Accessing the Collisionless Regime Using a Pulsed Power Driven, Exploding Wire Array Platform

We present the development and first data from a platform to study collisionless shocks using a pulsed power driver. The setup fielded on the MAGPIE generator (1.4 MA, 500 ns current drive) at Imperial College utilizes two side-by-side inverse wire arrays to produce counter-streaming, supersonic flows of plasma ablated from metal wires. One (“over-massed”) wire array produces a steady flow of ablated background plasma. The second exploding wire array launches a piston-like current loop into this plasma with signficant velocity and advected magnetic field, to allow the reflection of oncoming particles. We analyse the interaction region using a diagnostic suite consisting of multi-frame self-emission cameras, laser interferometry and collective optical Thomson scattering.