Investigation on spatial distribution of atomic density in a supersonic planar symmetric gas jet by simulations

As a special gas target with large aspect ratio, the planar symmetric gas jet has attracted some interests in High Harmonic Generation (HHG). It can be produced by gas adiabatic expansion through a supersonic slit nozzle into vacuum. In this work, the spatial distributions of atomic density are investigated in detail along the short side, the long side and the gas jet flow of the planar symmetric argon gas jet based on ANSYS Fluent. The results indicate that along the long side, the planar symmetric jet provides the advantages of high atomic density and the large dimension of uniform atomic density distribution. The density distribution profile is similar to the Gaussian one along the short side. The atomic density at the center of the jet outside the nozzle is lower and decreases much faster than that expected by idealized straight streamline model due to the lateral expansion of gas jet at slit nozzle width.