Schlieren Imaging Diagnostic for a Collisionless Shock Experiment

A schlieren imaging diagnostic has been designed and constructed to diagnose the properties of astrophysically-relevant collisionless shocks in colliding plasma jets. This system has been designed to capture electron density changes as small as 10% over millimeter length scales in ∼1--10 eV hydrogen plasmas at 10^14 cm^-3 density. The diagnostic consists of a 1.064 μm Nd:YAG illumination system and a megapixel imaging camera. The layout is a Z-configuration for compactness, with 20 cm diameter mirrors to enable a relatively wide imaging area. We present preliminary results from oblique and head-on jet merging experiments at densities in the 10^14 to 10^17 cm^-3 range.