Modeling of strongly collimated jets produced by high energy density plasmas on COBRA

Jet collimation in astrophysical plasmas and in the laboratory has recently received much attention. When the magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) model is used to represent both systems, scale invariance allows for the simple extension of the parameters encountered in laboratory experiments to much larger systems, like astrophysical outflows. However, the validation of such a model requires a precise comparison of numerical simulations with experimental data. Using radial foils as an experimental setup to generate strongly collimated plasma jets, we show that the Hall MHD model included in the PERSEUS code does well to capture the plasma dynamics of collimated jets, even with restrictive conditions such as a constant ionization number and the neglect of normally important transport processes. Very importantly, we show that jet collimation is not only the result of magnetic forces, but also converging radial flows.