Numerical study on the generation of a planar supersonic gas-jet

Planar supersonic gas-jets are valuable tools for different applications such as state of the art molecular spectroscopy and accelerator beam instrumentation; however, the details of their expansion and generation have not yet been analyzed extensively, despite numerous studies addressing these same questions for the simpler case of the axis-symmetric jet.In this paper, we investigate numerically the generation and evolution of planar supersonic gas-jets, extending the optimization studies done for axis-symmetric jets and focusing in particular on applications in accelerator beam instrumentation. We introduce a set of dedicated quality factors and use them to investigate the effects of changes to the geometry and thermodynamic state of the nozzle–skimmer system used to generate the planar jet. This analysis leads to an innovative, optimized nozzle–skimmer system design, which features advantages in terms of planar jet quality when compared to traditional setups. The proposed design also gives the possibility to modify, by variation of the thermodynamic quantities alone, the gas-jet characteristics in a wide range, including jet splitting and local density modulation. Density profiles of the generated jets are plotted for different parameter set.