Testing astrophysical radiation hydrodynamics codes with hypervelocity jetexperiments on the nova laser

Recent shock-tube experiments using the Nova laser facility have demonstrat ed that strong shocks and highly supersonic flows similar to those encounte red in astrophysical jets can be studied in detail through carefully contro lled experiments. We propose the use of high-power lasers such as Nova, Ome ga, Gekko, and the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to perform experiments on radiation hydrodynamic problems such as jets involving the multidimensio nal dynamics of strong shocks. High-power lasers are the only experimental facilities that can reach the very high Mach number regime. The experiments will serve as diagnostics of astrophysically interesting gasdynamic proble ms and could also form the basis of test problems for numerical algorithms for astrophysical radiation hydrodynamic codes. The potential for experimen tally achieving a strongly radiative jet seems very good.