We develop a stochastic model for the charge fluctuations on a microscopic dust particle resting on a surface exposed to plasma. We find in steady state that the fluctuations are normally distributed with a standard deviation that is proportional to $CT_{e})^{1/2}$, where $C$ is the particle-surface capacitance and $T_{e}$ is the plasma electron temperature. The time for an initially uncharged ensemble of particles to reach the steady state distribution is directly proportional to $CT_{e}$.
A nanometer-sized dielectric particle lying on a dielectric substrate is exposed to the flux of low-energy electrons, ion and electron fluxes from a cold plasma and the fluxes from the combination of these two sources with the help of particle-in-cell simulation to investigate the particle lofting phenomenon. The results are of interest for dust mitigation in the semiconductor industry, the lunar exploration, and the explanation of the dust levitation.
The in-depth oxygen diffusion into a low density polyethylene film is performed in the post-discharge of an atmospheric plasma torch, supplied in argon as carrier gas and with or without oxygen as reactive gas. The chemical and structural properties of the polymer surface and bulk are studied in terms of plasma parameters (treatment time, power, and reactive gas flow rate). A good correlation between XPS and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analyses is demonstrated. The penetration depth of oxygen into the bulk of the polymer is investigated by angle resolved-XPS and time-of-flight SIMS…
Ion energy distributions arising from laser-produced plasmas of Sn are measured over a wide laser parameter space. Planar-solid as well as liquid-droplet targets are exposed to infrared laser pulses with energy densities between 1J/cm$^2$ and 4kJ/cm$^2$ and durations spanning 0.5ps to 6ns. The measured ion energy distributions are compared to two self-similar solutions of a hydrodynamic approach assuming isothermal expansion of the plasma plume into vacuum. For planar and droplet targets exposed to ps-long pulses we find a good agreement between the experimental results and the self-similar so…
The grains immersed in plasma get eroded by the ions falling onto them. As a consequence, they exhibit self-consistent mass fluctuations due to perturbations in the plasma charging currents. The grain mass is then a dynamical variable. The modifications in the plasma dielectric properties are investigated and new ultra-low frequency modes are shown to exist in the plasma.
Fine-grain graphite targets have been exposed to ITER divertor relevant plasmas in Pilot-PSI to address material migration issues in fusion devices. Optical emission spectroscopy and mass loss measurements have been employed to quantify gross chemical erosion and net erosion yields, respectively. Effects of the ion impact energy and target geometry on carbon erosion yields have been studied. It is concluded that temporal evolution of gross chemical erosion is strongly connected with changes in morphology of plasma exposed surfaces. The net carbon erosion yield is increased when the targets are…
A comparative study of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) surfaces treated by the post-discharge of He and He-O2 plasmas at atmospheric pressure is presented. The characterization of treated PTFE surfaces and the species involved in the surface modification are related. In pure He plasmas, no significant change of the surface has been observed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), dynamic water contact angles (dWCA) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), in spite of important mass losses recorded. According to these observations, a layer-by-layer physical etching without any preferential orientat…
In a collisionless, magnetized plasma, particles may stream freely along magnetic-field lines, leading to phase "mixing" of their distribution function and consequently to smoothing out of any "compressive" fluctuations (of density, pressure, etc.,). This rapid mixing underlies Landau damping of these fluctuations in a quiescent plasma-one of the most fundamental physical phenomena that make plasma different from a conventional fluid. Nevertheless, broad power-law spectra of compressive fluctuations are observed in turbulent astrophysical plasmas (most vividly, in the solar wind) under conditi…
In turbulent high-beta astrophysical plasmas (exemplified by the galaxy cluster plasmas), pressure-anisotropy-driven firehose and mirror fluctuations grow nonlinearly to large amplitudes, dB/B ~ 1, on a timescale comparable to the turnover time of the turbulent motions. The principle of their nonlinear evolution is to generate secularly growing small-scale magnetic fluctuations that on average cancel the temporal change in the large-scale magnetic field responsible for the pressure anisotropies. The presence of small-scale magnetic fluctuations may dramatically affect the transport properties …
We have developed a time-dependent three-dimensional model of isotropic, adiabatic, and compressible magnetohydrodynamic plasma to understand nonlinear cascades of density fluctuations in local interstellar medium. Our simulations, describing evolution of initial supersonic, super Alfvénic plasma modes, indicate that nonlinear interactions lead to damping of plasma motion. During the process, turbulent cascades are governed predominantly by the Alfvénic modes and velocity field fluctuations evolve towards a state charachterized by near incompressibility. Consequently, density field is advected…
There is a quickly increasing wealth of experimental data on so-called dusty plasmas i. e. ionized gases or usual plasmas that contain micron sized charged particles. Interest in these structures is driven both by their importance in many astrophysical as well as commercial situations. Among them are linear and nonlinear wave phenomena. We consider the influence of dust charge fluctuations on stability of the ion-acoustic waves when the stream of particles is present. It is assumed that all grains of dust have equal masses but charges are not constant in time-they may fluctuate in time. The du…
We present the first measurements of a plasma velocity-space cross-correlation matrix. A singular value decomposition is applied to this inherently Hermitian matrix, and the relation between the eigenmodes and the plasma kinetic fluctuation modes is explored. A generalized wave admittance is introduced for these eigenmodes.
A master equation was formulated to study intrinsic charge fluctuations of a grain in a plasma as ions and primary electrons are attached to the grain through collisional collection, and secondary electrons are emitted from the grain. Two different plasmas with Maxwellian and non-Maxwellian distributions were considered. The fluctuations could be bistable in either plasma when the secondary electron emission is present, as two stable macrostates, associated with two stable roots of the charge net current, may exist. Metastablity of fluctuations, manifested by the passage of the grain charge be…
Single-point measurements of fluctuations in the scrape-off layer of magnetized plasmas are generally found to be dominated by large-amplitude bursts which are associated with radial motion of blob-like structures. A stochastic model for these fluctuations is presented, with the plasma density given by a random sequence of bursts with a fixed wave form. Under very general conditions, this model predicts a parabolic relation between the skewness and kurtosis moments of the plasma fluctuations. In the case of exponentially distributed burst amplitudes and waiting times, the probability density f…
The problem of beam propagation in a plasma with small scale and low intensity inhomogeneities is investigated. It is shown that the electron beam propagates in a plasma as a beam-plasma structure and is a source of Langmuir waves. The plasma inhomogeneity changes the spatial distribution of the waves. The spatial distribution of the waves is fully determined by the distribution of plasma inhomogeneities. The possible applications to the theory of radio emission associated with electron beams are discussed.
The reliability of Langmuir probe measurements for plasma-turbulence investigations is studied on GEMR gyro-fluid simulations and compared with results from conditionally sampled I-V characteristics as well as self-emitting probe measurements in the near scrape-off layer of the tokamak ASDEX Upgrade. In this region, simulation and experiment consistently show coherent in-phase fluctuations in density, plasma potential and also in electron temperature. Ion-saturation current measurements turn out to reproduce density fluctuations quite well. Fluctuations in the floating potential, however, are …
The charge states of ions in dense plasmas fluctuate due to collisional ionization and recombination. Here we show how, by modifying the ion interaction potential, these fluctuations can mediate energy exchange between the plasma electrons and ions. Moreover, we develop a theory for this novel electron-ion energy transfer mechanism. Calculations using a random walk approach for the fluctuations suggest that the energy exchange rate from charge state fluctuations could be comparable to direct electron-ion collisions. This mechanism is, however, predicted to exhibit a complex dependence on the t…
A stochastic differential equation for the plasma density dynamics is derived, consistent with the experimentally measured distribution and the theoretical quadratic nonlinearity. The plasma density is driven by a multiplicative Wiener process and evolves on the turbulence correlation time scale, while the linear growth is quadratically damped by the fluctuation level. The sensitivity of intermittency to the nonlinear dynamics is investigated by analyzing the Langevin representation of two intermittent distributions, showing the agreement between the quadratic nonlinearity and the gamma distri…
Among the fundamental and most challenging problems of laboratory, space, and astrophysical plasma physics is to understand the relaxation processes of nearly collisionless plasmas toward quasi-stationary states; and the resultant states of electromagnetic plasma turbulence. Recently, it has been argued that solar wind plasma $β$ and temperature anisotropy observations may be regulated by kinetic instabilities such as the ion-cyclotron, mirror, electron-cyclotron, and firehose instabilities; and that magnetic fluctuation observations are consistent with the predictions of the Fluctuation-Dissi…
The current-driven electrostatic ion-cyclotron (EIC) instability is studied in presence of a transverse dc electric fields in a collisional magnetized dusty plasma. We derive the appropriate charging equation self consistently by using the Vlasov equation.
Plasma fluctuations in the scrape-off layer of the Alcator C-Mod tokamak in ohmic and high confinement modes have been analyzed using gas puff imaging data. In all cases investigated, the time series of emission from a single spatially-resolved view into the gas puff are dominated by large-amplitude bursts, attributed to blob-like filament structures moving radially outwards and poloidally. There is a remarkable similarity of the fluctuation statistics in ohmic plasmas and in edge localized mode-free and enhanced D-alpha high confinement mode plasmas. Conditionally averaged wave forms have a t…
Fluctuations of electric and magnetic fields in the collisionless plasma are found as a solution of the initial value linearized problem. The plasma initial state is on average stationary and homogeneous. When the state is stable, the initial fluctuations decay exponentially and in the long time limit a stationary spectrum of fluctuations is established. For the equilibrium plasma it reproduces the spectrum obtained from the fluctuation-dissipation relation. Fluctuations in the unstable two-stream system are also discussed.
Fluctuation signatures of rotation reversals and non-local transport events in KSTAR L-mode plasmas
Seoul National University（首尔大学）；National Fusion Research Institute（韩国核融合研究院）；University of California, San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校）；Pohang University of Science and Technology（浦项科技大学）；National Institute of Fusion Science（日本核融合科学研究所）
Probability Distributions Functions (PDFs) of fluctuations of plasma edge parameters are skewed curves fairly different from normal distributions, whose shape appears almost independent of the plasma conditions and devices. We start from a minimal fluid model of edge turbulence and reformulate it in terms of uncoupled Langevin equations, admiting analytical solution for the PDFs of all the fields involved. We show that the supposed peculiarities of PDFs, and their universal character, are related to the generic properties of Langevin equations involving quadratic nonlinearities.
Three kinds of electrostatic modes are experimentally observed to propagate along magnetic-field lines for the first time in the pair-ion plasma consisting of only positive and negative fullerene ions with an equal mass. It is found that phase lags between the density fluctuations of positive and negative ions vary from 0 to $π$ depending on the frequency and is fixed at $π$ in the cases of ion acoustic and ion plasma waves, respectively. In addition, a new mode with the phase lag about $π$ appears in an intermediate-frequency band between the acoustic and plasma waves.
Using the Langevin approach and the multiscale technique, a kinetic theory of the time and space nonlocal fluctuations in the collisional plasma is constructed. In local equilibrium a generalized version of the Callen-Welton theorem is derived. It is shown that not only the dissipation but also the time and space derivatives of the dispersion determine the amplitude and the width of the spectrum lines of the electrostatic field fluctuations, as well as the form factor. There appear significant differences with respect to the non-uniform plasma. In the kinetic regime the form factor is more sen…
The spectral line shapes for hydrogen-like heavy ion emitters embedded in strongly correlated two-component electron-ion plasmas are investigated with numerical simulations. For that purpose the microfield fluctuations are calculated by molecular dynamics simulations where short range quantum effects are taken into account by using a regularized Coulomb potential for the electron-ion interaction. The microfield fluctuations are used as input in a numerical solution of the time-dependent Schroedinger equation for the radiating electron. In distinction to the standard impact and quasistatic appr…
We present an exact calculation of the power spectrum of the electromagnetic fluctuations in a relativistic equilibrium plasma described by Maxwell-Jüttner distribution functions. We consider the cases of wave vectors parallel or normal to the plasma mean velocity. The relative contributions of the subluminal and supraluminal fluctuations are evaluated. Analytical expressions of the spatial fluctuation spectra are derived in each case. These theoretical results are compared to particle-in-cell simulations, showing a good reproduction of the subluminal fluctuation spectra.
Magnetic fluctuations in a non-magnetized gaseous plasma is revisited and calculated without approximations, based on the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. It is argued that the present results are qualitative and quantitative different form previous one based on the same theorem. In particular, it is shown that it is not correct that the spectral intensity does not vary sensitively with $k_{cut}$. Also the simultaneous dependence of this intensity on the plasma and on the collisional frequencies are discussed.
We have derived tractable cubic (p=3) and quartic (p=4) fluctuation-dissipation theorems (FDTs) for the classical one-component plasma in a form that links a single (p+1)-point dynamical structure function to a linear combination of pth-order density response functions amenable to calculation from model plasma kinetic equations. For p greater than or equal to 3, we note the emergence of "remainder" contributions comprised of clusters of lower-order dynamical structure functions which can be ultimately traded for response functions vis-a-vis the linear and quadratic FDTs. Our analysis paves the…
The propagation of microwaves across a turbulent plasma density layer is investigated with full-wave simulations. To properly represent a fusion edge-plasma, drift-wave turbulence is considered based on the Hasegawa-Wakatani model. Scattering and broadening of a microwave beam whose amplitude distribution is of Gaussian shape is studied in detail as a function of certain turbulence properties. Parameters leading to the strongest deterioration of the microwave beam are identified and implications for existing experiments are given.
High speed camera imaging is a powerful tool to probe the spatiotemporal features of unsteady processes in plasmas, usually assuming light fluctuations to be a proxy for the plasma density fluctuations. In this article, we systematically compare high speed camera imaging with simultaneous measurements of the plasma parameters -- plasma density, electron temperature, floating potential -- in a modestly magnetized Argon plasma column at low pressure (1 mTorr, magnetic fields ranging from 160 to 640~G). The light emission was filtered around $488\pm5$~nm, $750\pm5$~nm, $810\pm5$~nm. We show that …
A linearised kinetic equation describing electrostatic perturbations of a Maxwellian equilibrium in a weakly collisional plasma forced by a random source is considered. The problem is treated as a kinetic analogue of the Langevin equation and the corresponding fluctuation-dissipation theorem is derived. This kinetic fluctuation-dissipation theorem reduces to the standard "fluid" one in the regime where the Landau damping rate is small and the system has no real frequency; in this case the simplest possible Landau-fluid closure of the kinetic equation coincides with the standard Langevin equati…
Physical mechanisms of the interaction of cold plasmas with organic surfaces are discussed. Trapping of plasma ions by the CH2 groups of polymer surfaces resulting in their electrical charging is treated. Polyethylene surfaces were exposed to the cold radiofrequency air plasma for different intervals of time. The change in the wettability of these surfaces was registered. The experimentally established characteristic time scales of the interaction of cold plasma with polymer surfaces are inversely proportional to the concentration of ions. The phenomenological kinetic model of the electrical c…
In this work, we use a passive advection model for ion temperature fluctuations, in order to investigate their effects on Doppler Spectral line shapes. The relevance of the model is discussed in the framework of the Braginskii equations, and the subsequent Probability Density Function evaluation relies on results obtained in neutral fluids. The resulting Doppler line profiles are shown to exhibit characteristic exponential tails.
The control of fluctuations generated in an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma is attempted by changing microwave powers. It is found that when a cage is introduced in the vacuum chamber, the fluctuations change from turbulent state to chaotic state in the high microwave power region while it changes from chaotic state to periodic state in the low microwave power region. This result suggests that the geometry of the cage affects the state of the instability. Moreover it is found that the superposition of multicusped fields created by small permanent magnets reduces the chaotic dimension…
It is pointed out that electron thermal fluctuations can couple with the ion acoustic mode in an inhomogeneous plasma to generate a low frequency ion time scale electromagnetic wave. This electromagnetic wave can become unstable if the temperature and density gradients are parallel to each other which can be the case in laser-plasmas similar to stellar cores. The comparisons of the present theoretical model with the previous investigations are also presented. The final result is applied to a classical laser induced plasma for illustration.
The energy budget of a collisionless plasma subject to electrostatic fluctuations is considered, and the excess of thermal energy over the minimum accessible to it under various constraints that limit the possible forms of plasma motion is calculated. This excess measures how much thermal energy is "available" for conversion into plasma instabilities, and therefore constitutes a nonlinear measure of plasma stability. A distribution function with zero available energy defines a "ground state" in the sense that its energy cannot decrease by any linear or nonlinear plasma motion. In a Vlasov plas…
The solar wind provides a natural laboratory for observations of MHD turbulence over extended temporal scales. Here, we apply a model independent method of differencing and rescaling to identify self-similarity in the Probability Density Functions (PDF) of fluctuations in solar wind bulk plasma parameters as seen by the WIND spacecraft. Whereas the fluctuations of speed v and IMF magnitude B are multi-fractal, we find that the fluctuations in the ion density rho, energy densities B^2 and rho v^2 as well as MHD-approximated Poynting flux vB^2 are mono-scaling on the timescales up to ~26 hours. …
A self-consistent kinetic theory of Thomson scattering of an electromagnetic field by a non-uniform plasma is derived. We draw the readers' attention to the inconsistency in recent results on the Thomson scattering in inhomogeneous plasma, which leads to violation of the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem. We show that not only the imaginary part, but also the derivatives of the real part of the dielectric susceptibility determine the amplitude and the width of the Thomson scattering spectral lines. As a result of inhomogeneity, these properties become asymmetric with respect to inversion of the …
Compressive fluctuations are a minor yet significant component of astrophysical plasma turbulence. In the solar wind, long-wavelength compressive slow-mode fluctuations lead to changes in $β_{\parallel \mathrm p}\equiv 8πn_{\mathrm p}k_{\mathrm B}T_{\parallel \mathrm p}/B^2$ and in $R_{\mathrm p}\equiv T_{\perp \mathrm p}/T_{\parallel \mathrm p}$, where $T_{\perp \mathrm p}$ and $T_{\parallel \mathrm p}$ are the perpendicular and parallel temperatures of the protons, $B$ is the magnetic field strength, and $n_{\mathrm p}$ is the proton density. If the amplitude of the compressive fluctuations …
Large-amplitude, intermittent fluctuations are ubiquitous in the boundary region of magnetically confined plasmas and lead to detrimental plasma-wall interactions in the next-generation, high duty cycle fusion power experiments. Using gas puff imaging data time series from the scrape-off layer in the Alcator C-Mod device, it is here demonstrated that the large-amplitude fluctuations can be described as a super-position of pulses with fixed shape and constant duration. By applying a new deconvolution algorithm on the data time series with a two-sided exponential pulse function, the arrival time…
Using numerical simulations, we investigate the equilibrium dynamics of a single component fluid with Yukawa interaction potential. We show that, for a wide range of densities and temperatures, the dynamics of the system are in striking agreement with a simple model of generalized hydrodynamics. Since the Yukawa potential can describe the ion-ion interactions in a plasma, the model has significant applicability for both analyzing and interpreting the results of x-ray scattering data from high power lasers and fourth generation light sources.
The Bandt-Pompe permutation entropy and the Jensen-Shannon statistical complexity are used to analyze fluctuating time series of three different plasmas: the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in the plasma wind tunnel of the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment (SSX), drift-wave turbulence of ion saturation current fluctuations in the edge of the Large Plasma Device (LAPD) and fully-developed turbulent magnetic fluctuations of the solar wind taken from the WIND spacecraft. The entropy and complexity values are presented as coordinates on the CH plane for comparison among the different plasma env…
We present a new model for simulating the electromagnetic fluctuations with frequencies much lower than the ion cyclotron frequency in plasmas confined in general magnetic configurations. This novel model (termed as GK-E&B) employs nonlinear gyrokinetic equations formulated in terms of electromagnetic fields along with momentum balance equations for solving fields. It, thus, not only includes kinetic effects, such as wave-particle interaction and microscopic (ion Larmor radius scale) physics; but also is computationally more efficient than the conventional formulation described in terms of pot…
We consider a van der Pol-Mathieu (vdPM) equation with parametric forcing, which arises in a simplified model of dusty plasma with dust-charge fluctuation. We make a detailed numerical investigation and show that the system can be driven to chaos either through a period doubling cascade or though a subcritical pitchfork bifurcation over an wide range of parameter space. We also discuss the frequency entrainment or frequency-locked phase of the dust-charge fluctuation dynamics and show that the system exhibits 2:1 parametric resonance away from the chaotic regime.
Turbulent plasma edge density fluctuations can broaden a traversing microwave beam degrading its quality. This can be a problem for scenarios relying on a high spatial localization of the deposition of injected microwave power, like controlling MHD instabilities. Here we present numerical estimations of the scattering of a microwave beam by density fluctuations over a large parameter range, including extrapolations to ITER. Two codes are used, the full-wave code IPF-FDMC and the wave kinetic equation solver WKBeam. A successful comparison between beam broadening obtained from DIII-D experiment…
The role of turbulence in setting boundary plasma conditions is presently a key uncertainty in projecting to fusion energy reactors. To robustly diagnose edge turbulence, we develop and demonstrate a technique to translate brightness measurements of HeI line radiation into local plasma fluctuations via a novel integrated deep learning framework that combines neutral transport physics and collisional radiative theory for the $3^3 D - 2^3 P$ transition in atomic helium. The tenets for experimental validity are reviewed, illustrating that this turbulence analysis for ionized gases is transferable…
Clear evidence for a positive correlation is established between the magnitude of magnetic fluctuations in the lower-hybrid frequency range and enhancement of reconnection rates in a well-controlled laboratory plasma. The fluctuations belong to the right-hand polarized whistler wave branch, propagating obliquely to the reconnecting magnetic field, with a phase velocity comparable to the relative drift velocity between electrons and ions. The short coherence length and large variation along the propagation direction indicate their strongly nonlinear nature in three dimensions.
Intermittent fluctuations in the boundary of magnetically confined plasmas are investigated by numerical turbulence simulations of a reduced fluid model describing the evolution of the plasma density and electric drift vorticity in the two-dimensional plane perpendicular to the magnetic field. Two different cases are considered, one describing resistive drift waves in the edge region and another including only the interchange instability due to unfavorable magnetic field curvature in the scrape-off layer. Analysis of long data time series obtained by single-point recordings are compared to pre…
A master equation is formulated to model the states of the grain charge in a general multi-component plasma, where there are electrons and various kinds of positive or negative ions that are singly or multiply charged. A Fokker-Planck equation is developed from the master equation through the system-size expansion method. The Fokker-Planck equation has a Gaussian solution with a mean and variance governed by two initial-value differential equations involving the rates of the attachment of ions and electrons to the dust grain. Grain charging in a plasma containing electrons, protons and alpha p…
The fluctuation-dissipation theorem is used to evaluate the screening factor of nuclear reactions due to the electromagnetic fluctuations in a plasma. We show that the commonly used Saltpeter factor is obtained if only fluctuations near the plasma eigenfrequency are assumed to be important (ω\sim ω_{pe}\ll T (\hbar=k_{B}=1)). By taking into account all the fluctuations, the highly damped ones, with ω>ω_{pe}, as well as those with ω\leqω_{pe}, we find that nuclear reaction rates are higher than those obtained using the Saltpeter factor, for many interesting plasmas.
A general formalism for the treatment of density fluctuations in Coulomb plasmas is presented and applied to the treatment of temperature relaxation in multi-component quantum plasmas when the separate components (electrons and ions) relax to LTE much faster than the mutual equilibration rate. The underlying theory is based upon the Random Phase Approximation with static local field corrections (LFCs) to account for short-range correlations between the particles. A general formula for the electron-ion equilibration rate, similar to the one given by Daligault and Dimonte, is derived. However a …
We derive the expression for the collisional energy loss in two stream plasma induced by the fluctuating chromoelectric field. It is revealed that the main contribution here comes from the unstable modes which grow exponentially with time. A strong direction dependence of the energy loss has also been demonstrated.
