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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 February 2013
The formation of supersonic, radiatively cooled plasma jets with applications tolaboratory astrophysics has been an active area of research on the MAGPIE generator. Oneof the ways of producing astrophysically-relevant jets in the laboratory is by using theablation of plasma from a radial foil Z-pinch. In this configuration a ~1.4 MA, 250ns current pulse is introduced into an aluminium disk with a thickness of 15μm. The ablated plasma from the foil converges on the axis, producing asteady and collimated jet with a typical axial velocity of ~100 km/s. The setupallows for the addition of argon above the foil for jet-ambient interaction studies. Theinteraction is characterised by the formation of several shock features, which arepresented and discussed from experimental data and numerical simulations.