Analysis of microscopic magnitudes of radiative blast waves launched in xenon clusters with collisional-radiative steady-state simulations

- We analyze microscopic magnitudes of plasmas for typical conditions found in laboratory blast waves in clusters of gases.
- A particular experiment of blast waves launched in xenon is analyzed.
- We perform a collisional-radiative steady-state diagnostics of the temperature of the blast wave.
- We study the opacity effects in the kinetics calculations and the intensity in the shock shell of the blast wave.
- We analyze self-absorption and self-emission in the radiative precursor.

Radiative shock waves play a pivotal role in the transport energy into the stellar medium. This fact has led to many efforts to scale the astrophysical phenomena to accessible laboratory conditions and their study has been highlighted as an area requiring further experimental investigations. Low density material with high atomic mass is suitable to achieve radiative regime, and, therefore, low density xenon gas is commonly used for the medium in which the radiative shocks such as radiative blast waves propagate. In this work, by means of collisional-radiative steady-state calculations, a characterization and an analysis of microscopic magnitudes of laboratory blast waves launched in xenon clusters are made. Thus, for example, the average ionization, the charge state distribution, the cooling time or photon mean free paths are studied. Furthermore, for a particular experiment, the effects of the self-absorption and self-emission in the specific intensity emitted by the shock front and that is going through the radiative precursor are investigated. Finally, for that experiment, since the electron temperature is not measured experimentally, an estimation of this magnitude is made both for the shock shell and the radiative precursor.