Perpendicular subcritical shock structure in a collisional plasma experiment
D. R. Russell, G. C. Burdiak, J. J. Carroll-Nellenback, J. W. D. Halliday, J. D. Hare, S. Merlini, L. G. Suttle, V. Valenzuela-Villaseca, S. J. Eardley, J. A. F… 展开作者
D. R. Russell, G. C. Burdiak, J. J. Carroll-Nellenback, J. W. D. Halliday, J. D. Hare, S. Merlini, L. G. Suttle, V. Valenzuela-Villaseca, S. J. Eardley, J. A. Fullalove, G. C. Rowland, R. A. Smith, A. Frank, P. Hartigan, A. L. Velikovich, S. V. Lebedev
We present a study of perpendicular subcritical shocks in a collisional laboratory plasma. Shocks are produced by placing obstacles into the super-magnetosonic outflow from an inverse wire array z-pinch. We demonstrate the existence of subcritical shocks in this regime and find that secondary shocks form in the downstream. Detailed measurements of the subcritical shock structure confirm the absence of a hydrodynamic jump. We calculate the classical (Spitzer) resistive diffusion length and show that it is approximately equal to the shock width. We measure little heating across the shock (< 10 % of the ion kinetic energy) which is consistent with an absence of viscous dissipation.
In modern inertial fusion experiments there is a complex interplay between non-locality and magnetisation that can greatly influence transport. In this work we use a matrix recursion method to include higher-order corrections beyond the diffusion approximation usually used for magnetised plasmas. Working in the linear regime, we show this can account for arbitrary orders of the distribution function expansion in Knudsen non-locality parameter $kλ_{ei}$. Transport coefficients, such as thermal conductivity, deviate significantly from the magnetised diffusive approximation. In particular we show…
A large family of plasmas has collisional mean-free-path much longer than the non-neutral sheath width, which scales with the plasma Debye length. The plasmas, particularly the electrons, assume strong temperature anisotropy in the sheath. The temperature in the sheath flow direction ($T_{e\parallel}$) is lower and drops towards the wall as a result of the decompressional cooling by the accelerating sheath flow. The electron temperature in the transverse direction of the flow field ($T_{e\perp}$) not only is higher but also spikes up in the sheath. This abnormal behavior of $T_{e\perp}$ spike …
Colliding collisionless shocks appear in a great variety of astrophysical phenomena and are thought to be possible sources of particle acceleration in the Universe. To investigate the detailed dynamics of this phenomenon, we have performed a dedicated laboratory experiment. We have generated two counter-streaming subcritical collisionless magnetized shocks by irradiating two teflon (CF$_2$) targets with 100 J, 1 ns laser beams on the LULI2000 laser facility. The interaction region between the plasma flows was pre-filled with a low density background hydrogen plasma and initialized with an exte…
Gyrokinetic simulations of magnetic reconnection are presented to investigate plasma heating for strongly magnetized, weakly collisional plasmas. For a low plasma beta case, parallel and perpendicular phase mixing strongly enhance energy dissipation yielding electron heating. Heating occurs for a long time period after a dynamical process of magnetic reconnection ended. For a higher beta case, the ratio of ion to electron dissipation rate increases, suggesting that ion heating (via phase-mixing) may become an important dissipation channel in high beta plasmas.
In tokamak plasmas, sheared flows perpendicular to the driving temperature gradients can strongly stabilize linear modes. While the system is linearly stable, regimes with persistent nonlinear turbulence may develop, i.e. the system is subcritical. A perturbation with small but finite amplitude may be sufficient to push the plasma into a regime where nonlinear effects are dominant and thus allow sustained turbulence. The minimum threshold for nonlinear instability to be triggered provides a criterion for assessing whether a tokamak is likely to stay in the quiescent (laminar) regime. At the cr…
A perpendicular ion drift is investigated as a mechanism for the generation of magnetic field structures in a highly collisional dusty plasma. The basic dissipation mechanism is assumed to be the dust-neutrals momentum exchange, so that plasmas with a small ionization fraction are natural candidates for experiments. The model reduces to a nonlinear partial differential equation for the vector potential. The conditions for linear instability are determined. The stationary states are periodic arrangements for the magnetic field, described by a Lienard equation. The fully depleted (ion-dust) case…
Kinetic Vlasov equation for collisional Maxwellian plasmas is used. Collision integral of BGK (Bhatnagar, Gross and Krook) type is applied. From Vlasov equation we find distribution function of electrons in square-law approximation on size of transversal electric field. The formula for electric current calculation is deduced. This formula contains an one-dimensional quadrature. It is shown, that nonlinearity leads to revealing of the longitudinal electric current directed along a wave vector. This longitudinal current is perpendicular to known so-called transversal classical current. The class…
Kinetic instabilities in weakly collisional, high beta plasmas are investigated using two-dimensional hybrid expanding box simulations with Coulomb collisions modeled through the Langevin equation (corresponding to the Fokker-Planck one). The expansion drives a parallel or perpendicular temperature anisotropy (depending on the orientation of the ambient magnetic field). For the chosen parameters the Coulomb collisions are important with respect to the driver but are not strong enough to keep the system stable with respect to instabilities driven by the proton temperature anisotropy. In the cas…
Magnetic reconnection and associated heating of ions and electrons in strongly magnetised, weakly collisional plasmas are studied by means of gyrokinetic simulations. It is shown that an appreciable amount of the released magnetic energy is dissipated to yield (irreversible) electron and ion heating via phase mixing. Electron heating is mostly localized to the magnetic island, not the current sheet, and occurs after the dynamical reconnection stage. Ion heating is comparable to electron heating only in high-beta plasmas, and results from both parallel phase mixing and perpendicular phase mixin…
We show that the transverse component of the wakefield can be produced with the application of an external magnetic field that generates radiation in the THz range. For this, we carry out analytical and numerical calculations to evaluate the components of the wakefield in a realistic situation of collisional plasma. We observe that the wakefield in the direction of the external magnetic field is produced, though the components of the wakefield are observed in the directions parallel and perpendicular to the direction of propagation of the laser and the magnetic field. Based on the approach of …
We develop a general theory of buoyancy instabilities in the electron-ion plasma with the electron heat flux based not upon MHD equations, but using a multicomponent plasma approach in which the momentum equation is solved for each species. We investigate the geometry in which the background magnetic field is perpendicular to the gravity and stratification. General expressions for the perturbed velocities are given without any simplifications. Collisions between electrons and ions are taken into account in the momentum equations in a general form, permitting us to consider both weakly and stro…
Kinetic Vlasov equation for collisional plasmas with BGK (Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook) collision integral is used. The case of arbitrary temperature (i.e. arbitrary degree of degeneration of electronic gas) is considered. From kinetic Vlasov equation the distribution function in square-law approximation on size of transversal electromagnetic field is received. The formula for calculation electric current is deduced. This formula contains one-dimension quadrature. It is shown, that the nonlinearity account leads to occurrence the longitudinal electric current directed along the wave vector. This long…
The physics of plasmas containing positive and negative ions is discussed with special attention to the recently produced pair-ion plasma containing ions of equal mass and opposite charge. The effects of the density gradient in the direction perpendicular to the ambient magnetic field vector, observed in the experiment, are discussed. In addition, the possible presence of electrons is discussed in the context of plasma modes propagating at an angle with respect to the magnetic field vector. The electrons may either be added to the plasma or enter the plasma attached to negative ions and then b…
A four-dimensional plasma model able to describe the scrape-off layer region of tokamak devices at arbitrary collisionality is derived in the drift-reduced limit. The basis of the model is provided by a drift-kinetic equation that retains the full non-linear Coulomb collision operator and describes arbitrarily far from equilibrium distribution functions. By expanding the dependence of distribution function over the perpendicular velocity in a Laguerre polynomial basis and integrating over the perpendicular velocity, a set of four-dimensional moment equations for the expansion coefficients of t…
Differential rotation is known to suppress linear instabilities in fusion plasmas. However, even in the absence of growing eigenmodes, subcritical fluctuations that grow transiently can lead to sustained turbulence. Here transient growth of electrostatic fluctuations driven by the parallel velocity gradient (PVG) and the ion temperature gradient (ITG) in the presence of a perpendicular ExB velocity shear is considered. The maximally simplified case of zero magnetic shear is treated in the framework of a local shearing box. There are no linearly growing eigenmodes, so all excitations are transi…
Shock accelerated electrons are found in many astrophysical environments, and the mechanisms by which they are accelerated to high energies are still not completely clear. For relatively high Mach numbers, the shock is supercritical, and its front exhibit broadband fluctuations, or ripples. Shock surface fluctuations have been object of many observational and theoretical studies, and are known to be important for electron acceleration. We employ a combination of hybrid Particle-In-Cell and test-particle methods to study how shock surface fluctuations influence the acceleration of suprathermal …
Kinetic Vlasov-Boltzmann equation for degenerate collisional plasmas with integral of collisions of relaxation type BGK (Bhatnagar, Gross and Krook) is used. Square-law expansion on size of intensity of electric field for kinetic equation, Lorentz's force and integral of collisions is considered. It is shown, that nonlinearity leads to generation of the longitudinal electric current directed along a wave vector. Longitudinal current is perpendicular to the known transversal classical current received at the linear analysis. The case of small values of wave number is considered. When frequency …
In a classical ideal plasma, a magnetic field is known to reduce the heat conductivity perpendicular to the field whereas it does not alter the one along the field. Here we show that, in strongly correlated plasmas that are observed at high pressure or/and low temperature, a magnetic field reduces the perpendicular heat transport much less and even {\it enhances} the parallel transport. These surprising observations are explained by the competition of kinetic, potential and collisional contributions to the heat conductivity. Our results are based on first principle molecular dynamics simulatio…
In this report, we present a dynamical systems' approach to study the exact nonlinear wave-particle interaction in relativistic regime. We give a particular attention to the effect of wave obliquity on the dynamics of the orbits by studying the specific cases of parallel ($θ=0$) and perpendicular ($θ=-π/2$) propagations in comparison to the general case of oblique propagation $θ=]-π/2, 0[$. We found that the fixed points of the system correspond to Landau resonance, and that the dynamics can evolve from trapping to surfatron acceleration for propagation angles obeying a Hopf bifurcations condi…
Black holes that accrete far below the Eddington limit are believed to accrete through a geometrically thick, optically thin, rotationally supported plasma that we will refer to as a radiatively inefficient accretion flow (RIAF). RIAFs are typically collisionless in the sense that the Coulomb mean free path is large compared to $GM/c^2$, and relativistically hot near the event horizon. In this paper we develop a phenomenological model for the plasma in RIAFs, motivated by the application to sources such as Sgr A* and M87. The model is derived using Israel-Stewart theory, which considers deviat…
In a wide variety of natural and laboratory magnetized plasmas, filaments appear as a result of interchange instability. These convective structures substantially enhance transport in the direction perpendicular to the magnetic field. According to filament models, their propagation may follow different regimes depending on the parallel closure of charge conservation. This is of paramount importance in magnetic fusion plasmas, as high collisionality in the scrape-off layer may trigger a regime transition leading to strongly enhanced perpendicular particle fluxes. This work reports for the first…
The turbulent amplification of cosmic magnetic fields depends upon the material properties of the host plasma. In many hot, dilute astrophysical systems, such as the intracluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters, the rarity of particle--particle collisions allows departures from local thermodynamic equilibrium. These departures exert anisotropic viscous stresses on the plasma motions that inhibit their ability to stretch magnetic-field lines. We present a numerical study of the fluctuation dynamo in a weakly collisional plasma using magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations endowed with a field-paral…
We analyze plasma heating in weakly collisional kinetic Alfvén wave (KAW) turbulence using high resolution gyrokinetic simulations spanning the range of scales between the ion and the electron gyroradii. Real space structures that have a higher than average heating rate are shown not to be confined to current sheets. This novel result is at odds with previous studies, which use the electromagnetic work in the local electron fluid frame, i.e. $\mathbf{J} \!\cdot\! (\mathbf{E} + \mathbf{v}_e\times\mathbf{B})$, as a proxy for turbulent dissipation to argue that heating follows the intermittent sp…
A detailed understanding of island seeding is crucial to avoid (N)TMs and their negative consequences like confinement degradation and disruptions. In the present work, we investigate the growth of 2/1 islands in response to magnetic perturbations. Although we use externally applied perturbations produced by resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) coils for this study, results are directly transferable to island seeding by other MHD instabilities creating a resonant magnetic field component at the rational surface. Experimental results for 2/1 island penetration from ASDEX Upgrade are presented e…
Laboratory measurements of energy partitioning and anomalous electron heating in magnetized, perpendicular collisionless shocks
Princeton University（普林斯顿大学）；Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory（劳伦斯利弗莫尔国家实验室）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；National Institutes of Natural Sciences（国立自然科学研究所）；Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory（普林斯顿等离子体物理实验室）；NASA Goddard Space Flight Center（美国宇航局戈达德太空飞行中心）；University of Rochester（罗切斯特大学）；Kasetsart University（泰国农业大学）；University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学帕克分校）；University of California Los Angeles（加州大学洛杉矶分校）
A conserved thermo-mechanic invariant in extended fluid description of collisionless plasmas
Evgeni Kharadze Georgian National Astrophysical Observatory（叶夫根尼·哈拉泽格鲁吉亚国家天体物理观测站）；Nodia Institute of Geophysics, Tbilisi State University（第比利斯国立大学诺迪亚地球物理研究所）；Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University（伊万·贾瓦希什维利第比利斯国立大学）
