Application of a high-power KrF laser for the study of supersonic gas flows and the development of hydrodynamic instabilities in layered media

The design of a miniature laser shock tube for the study of a wide range of hydrodynamic phenomena in liquids at pressures greater than 10 kbar and in supersonic flows with large Mach numbers (greater than 10) is discussed. A substance filling a chamber of quadratic cross section, with a characteristic size of several centimetres, is compressed and accelerated due to local absorption of 100 ns, 100 J KrF laser pulses near the entrance window. It is proposed to focus a laser beam by a prism raster, which provides a uniform intensity distribution over the tube cross section. The system can be used to study the hypersonic flow past objects of complex shape and the development of hydrodynamic instabilities in the case of a passage of a shock wave or a compression wave through the interfaces between different media.