On the Dynamical Overstability of Radiative Blast Waves: The Atomic Physics of Shock Stability

Physics – Atomic Physics

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Radiative shocks can exhibit a number of interesting hydrodynamic instabilities and overstabilities. Of these, a rippling overstability first discovered theoretically by Vishniac (1983, ApJ, 274, 152) and experimentally by Grun et al. (1991, PRL, 66, 2738), which can lead to clumping of the ambient gas, is of particular interest to astrophysicists. In this paper atomic physics calculations of radiative cooling incorporating detailed level population kinetics are used to determine how radiative a radiative shock needs to be in order to be overstable. The calculations explain the measurement of shock overstability by Grun et al. and explain why the overstability was not observed in other experiments. The methodology described here can be especially useful in astrophysical situations where the relevant properties (i.e. element abundances, shock velocities, temperatures) leading to an overstability can be measured spectroscopically, but the effective adiabatic index, which is the overstability criterion in Vishniac's original work, is harder to determine.

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