Laboratory formation of a scaled protostellar jet by coaligned poloidal magnetic field: recent results and new exeprimental studies

Accretion shocks in Young Stellar Objects (YSO) are a subject of great interest in astrophysics; they exhibit intense magnetic activity and are surrounded by an accretion disk from which matter falls down onto the stellar surface in the form of columns following the magnetic lines (B ~ kG) at the free-fall velocity (100-500 km/s). As a column impacts the stellar surface, a radiative shock is created which heats up the infalling flow. As a consequence, a new reverse shock forms and some oscillations are expected in the emitted radiation as a proof of this periodic dynamic, but no periodicity has yet been detected in observations.To understand the reasons for this apparent inconsistency, we have recently developped an experimental setup [B. Albertazzi et al. Science 346, 325 (2014)] in which a plasma flow (generated by a high energy laser: 10¹³ W/cm² - 0.6 ns pulse) is confined inside a poloidal magnetic field (20 T). This jet has an aspect ratio >10, a temperature of tens of eV, an electron density of 10¹⁸ cm^-3 and propagates at 700 km/s as show by our previous numerical work [A. Ciardi et al. Physical Review Letters, 110 (2013)]. To investigate the accretion dynamics, the jet acts as the accretion column and hits a secondary target acting as the stellar surface. We will present the recent results on generation and dynamics of the jet and the new experimental results of this configuration, namely of a supersonic reverse shock traveling within the accretion column with a speed of 100 km/s, representing a Mach number of ~ 30, and the observation of increased density structures along the edges of the interaction. This will be discussed in the light of 3D-magneto-hydrodynamic simulations which parametric variations allow to understand how the various plasma parameters affect the accretion.