Laser experiment for the study of accretion dynamics of Young Stellar Objects: Design and scaling

A new experimental set-up designed to investigate the accretion dynamics in newly born stars is presented. It takes advantage of a magnetically collimated stream produced by coupling a laser-generated expanding plasma to a 2 × 10⁵ G (20 T) externally applied magnetic field. The stream is used as the accretion column and is launched onto an obstacle target that mimics the stellar surface. This setup has been used to investigate in details the accretion dynamics, as reported in Ref. [1]. Here, the characteristics of the stream are detailed and a link between the experimental plasma expansion and a 1D adiabatic expansion model is presented. Dimensionless numbers are also calculated in order to characterize the experimental flow and its closeness to the ideal MHD regime. We build a bridge between our experimental plasma dynamics and the one taking place in the Classical T Tauri Stars (CTTSs), and we find that our set-up is representative of a high plasma β CTTS accretion case.