Confinement and re-expansion of laser induced plasma in transverse magnetic field: Dynamical behaviour and geometrical aspect of expanding plume

•Stagnation and re-expansion of plasma plume across a transverse magnetic field.•Slab like plume splitting in presence of both magnetic field and ambient gas.•Temporal evolution of plasma diamagnetism and E×BE×B drift of the plume.•Image analysis with Singular value decomposition technique.•Field aligned intensity pattern in the expanding plasma plume.

We present dynamical behaviour of aluminium plasma across 0.45 T magnetic field at low ambient pressure using fast imaging technique. The present finding related to the plume dynamics, splitting pattern and geometry of plume is significantly different from reported results on similar experiments. In vacuum, after the initial expansion, the plume is tending to stagnation and begins to re-expand with constant velocity. The above behaviour is correlated with the plume expansion in diamagnetic limit and E×BE×B drift in non-diamagnetic regime. Two slab like structures, moving with different velocities are observed in presence of both the magnetic field and ambient gas.