A small fraction of ions can destabilize the diocotron mode (off axis rotation) of an electron plasma confined in a Malmberg-Penning trap. In this paper a set of experimental measurements performed in the ELTRAP device on the ions induced diocotron instability is presented. In particular, the dependence of the instability on the electron energy has been analyzed, by heating the plasma with a RF burst or by injecting into the trap electrons with different energies. A simple experimental technique to limit the instability is also described.
Plasma instabilities are the non-linear processes occurring in plasmas when excess energy gets accumulated in a plasma system which is unable to hold it. There are almost 60 known plasma instabilities in nature.
The stimulated Raman scattering instability in a fully degenerate electron plasma is studied applying relativistic hydrodynamic and Maxwell equations. We demonstrated that the instability develops for weakly as well as strongly relativistic degenerate plasma. It is shown that in the field of strong radiation relativistically degenerate plasma effectively responses as in the case of weak degeneracy.
In plasmas with electron drift (current) relative to static ions, the ion acoustic wave is subject to the kinetic instability which takes place if the directed electron speed exceeds the ion acoustic speed. The instability threshold becomes different in the case of one quasi-neutral electron-ion plasma propagating through another static quasi-neutral (target) plasma. The threshold velocity of the propagating plasma may be well below the ion acoustic speed of the static plasma. Such a current-less instability may frequently be expected in space and astrophysical plasmas.
The filamentation instability of the electromagnetic (EM) beam in an underdense plasma with high level of degeneracy is examined by means of the momentum equation, continuity equation and Maxwell's equations. It has been demonstrated that the instability develops for weakly as well as strongly relativistic degenerate plasma and arbitrary strong amplitude of EM beams.
The three-dimensional instability of two coupled electromagnetic waves in an unmagnetized plasma is investigated theoretically and numerically. In the regime of two-plasmon decay, where one pump wave frequency is approximately twice the electron plasma frequency, we find that the coupled pump waves give rise to enhanced instability with wave vectors between those of the two beams. In the case of ion parametric decay instability, where the pump wave decays into one Langmuir wave and one ion acoustic wave, the instability regions are added with no distinct amplification. Our investigation can be…
We present the first observation of an instability in an expanding ultracold plasma. We observe periodic emission of electrons from an ultracold plasma in weak, crossed magnetic and electric fields, and a strongly perturbed electron density distribution in electron time-of-flight projection images. We identify this instability as a high-frequency electron drift instability due to the coupling between the electron drift wave and electron cyclotron harmonic, which has large wavenumbers corresponding to wavelengths close to the electron gyroradius.
A generalized linear dispersion relation of electromagnetic slab universal modes is derived, taking into account arbitrary ion charge state, electron finite Larmor radius (FLR) effects, and Debye shielding effects. As a consequence, it provides more accurate predictions and is applicable to a wider range of plasmas. We find that electron FLR effects have a weakly stabilizing effect on the slab universal instability in electron-ion plasma, while Debye shielding strongly stabilizes this instability when $λ_D$ approaches $ρ_i$ ($λ_D$ is the Debye length and $ρ_i$ is the ion gyro-radius). In parti…
A new quasi-neutral model describing the Weibel instability of a high-current relativistic beam propagating through a resistive plasma is developed. It treats beam electrons as kinetic particles, and ambient plasma as a non-relativistic fluid. For a finite-temperature beam, a new class of negative energy magneto-sound waves is identified, which can possess negative energy. Their growth due to collisional dissipation in the cold return current destabilizes the beam-plasma system even for high beam temperatures. We perform detailed two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of…
It is shown that the transport in low temperature, collisional, bounded plasma is enhanced by instabilities at high magnetic field. While the magnetic field confines the electrons in a stable plasma, the instability completely destroys the confinement such that the transport becomes independent of the magnetic field in the highly magnetized limit. An analytical expression of the instability-enhanced collision frequency is proposed, based on a magnetic field independent edge-to-center density ratio.
A new analytical nonmodal approach to investigate the plasma instabilities driven by the sheared current is presented and applied to the analysis of the linear evolution of the Simon-Hoh (S-H) instability of a plasma in the inhomogeneous electric field. We found analytically strong nonmodal growth for this instability which is missed completely in the normal modes analysis but dominates the normal mode growth when the shearing rate of the current velocity is above the growth rate of the S-H instability with uniform current. It includes also the nonmodal growth for the subcritical perturbations…
An analytical model for the self-modulation instability of a long relativistic proton bunch propagating in uniform plasmas is developed. The self-modulated proton bunch resonantly excites a large amplitude plasma wave (wake field), which can be used for acceleration of plasma electrons. Analytical expressions for the linear growth rate and the number of exponentiations are given. We use the full three-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations to study the beam self-modulation and the transition to the nonlinear stage. It is shown that the self-modulation of the proton bunch competes with …
The production of weakly relativistic plasma by microwave electric field with circular polarization has been studied. Electron distribution function obtained for this produced plasma and shown that it is non-equilibrium and anisotropic. It is shown that produced plasma accelerated on direction of propagation microwave electric field. The electron velocity on this direction strongly depends on electron origination phase during ionization and microwave electric field phase and it s amplitude. The dielectric tensor obtained for this plasma and the weibel instability studied for it.
Low frequency longitudinal wave instability in magnetized high correlation dusty plasmas is investigated. The dust charging relaxation is taken into account. It is found that the instablity of wave is determined significantly by the frequency of wave, the dust charging relaxation, the shear viscosity and viscoelastic relaxation time, the coupling parameter of high correlation of dust as well the strength of magnetic field.
Interaction of an intense electron beam with a finite-length, inhomogeneous plasma is investigated numerically. The plasma density profile is maximal in the middle and decays towards the plasma edges. Two regimes of the two-stream instability are observed. In one regime, the frequency of the instability is the plasma frequency at the density maximum and plasma waves are excited in the middle of the plasma. In the other regime, the frequency of the instability matches the local plasma frequency near the edges of the plasma and the intense plasma oscillations occur near plasma boundaries. The la…
The influence of viscosity gradient (due to shear flow) on low frequency collective modes in strongly coupled dusty plasma is analyzed. It is shown that for a well known viscoelastic plasma model, the velocity shear dependent viscosity leads to an instability of the shear mode. The inhomogeneous viscous force and velocity shear coupling supply the free energy for the instability. The combined strength of shear flow and viscosity gradient wins over any stabilizing force and makes the shear mode unstable. Implication of such a novel instability and its applications are briefly outlined.
This paper studies the propagation of intense laser in plasmas in weak relativistic region($0.1<a_0^2<0.5$) using the quasi-periodic approximation. Effective Lorentz factor and density wave effects are calculated in detail. The relativistic correction on stimulated Brillouin instability is investigated in the rest parts. The coupled dispersion relations of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering(SBS) are obtained and investigated numerically.
Current models predict the hose instability to crucially limit the applicability of plasma-wakefield accelerators. By developing an analytical model which incorporates the evolution of the hose instability over long propagation distances, this work demonstrates that the inherent drive-beam energy loss, along with an initial beam energy spread detune the betatron oscillations of beam electrons, and thereby mitigate the instability. It is also shown that tapered plasma profiles can strongly reduce initial hosing seeds. Hence, we demonstrate that the propagation of a drive beam can be stabilized …
Temporal evolution of the inhomogeneous energy density driven instability (IEDDI) is examined in presence of a nonuniform transverse dc electric field in collisional magnetized plasma cylinder. Using experimentally known parameters relevant to IEDDI, we have estimated the growth rate for $ν$=1, 2 and 3 nonlocal eigenmodes.
Symmetric electron-positron plasmas in inhomogeneous magnetic fields are intrinsically subject to interchange instability and transport. Scaling relations for the propagation velocity of density blob perturbations relevant to transport in isothermal magnetically confined electron-positron plasmas are deduced, including damping effects when Debye lengths are large compared to Larmor radii. The relations are verified by nonlinear full-F gyrofluid computations. Results are in favour of sufficient magnetic confinement for planned electron-positron plasma experiments. The model is generalised to ot…
Propagation of charged particle beams in background plasma as a method of space charge neutralization has been shown to achieve a high degree of charge and current neutralization and therefore enables nearly ballistic propagation and focusing of charged particle beams. Correspondingly, use of plasmas for propagation of charged particle beams has important applications for transport and focusing of intense particle beams in inertial fusion and high energy density laboratory plasma physics. However, the streaming of beam ions through a background plasma can lead to development of the two-stream …
We investigate the role of thermal instability, arising from radiative cooling of an optically thin, dusty plasma, by linear stability analysis. The corresponding isobaric stability condition for condensation mode is found to be modified significantly by the degree of ionization and concentration of finite sized, relatively heavy, and negatively charged dust particles. It has been shown that though the fundamental wave mode is similar in nature to the one in absence of dust particles, a new dust-wave mode can propagate in such a plasma. It is conjectured that the presence of negatively charged…
A hypothesis on the physical mechanism generating the heartbeat instability in complex (dusty) plasmas is presented. It is suggested that the instability occurs due to the periodically repeated critical transformation on the boundary between the microparticle-free area (void) and the complex plasma. The critical transformation is supposed to be analogous to the formation of the sheath in the vicinity of an electrode. The origin of the transformation is the loss of the electrons and ions on microparticles surrounding the void. We have shown that this hypothesis is consistent with the experiment…
The common feature of sheared flows of an ideal fluid and plasma in magnetic field is the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. This instability is described by identical equations in mentioned two cases. The wave equation for the eigenmodes in the plasma obtained by the kinetic method in the long-wave limit coincides with the Rayleigh equation known for an ideal fluid. Velocity profile with a transition layer of finite width is considered. Odd modes are investigated. Localized velocity shear layer is the source of perturbations propagating beyond the transition layer. The conditions of localization o…
The beam hosing instability is analyzed theoretically for a witness beam in the quasi-linear regime of plasma accelerators. In this regime, the hosing instability saturates, even for a monoenergetic bunch, at a level much less than standard scalings predict. Analytic expressions are derived for the saturation distance and amplitude and are in agreement with numerical results. Saturation is due to the natural head-to-tail variations in the focusing force, including the self-consistent transverse beam loading.
In this work linear stability analysis of a magnetized dusty plasma with an anisotropic dust component having transversal motions much stronger than motions parallel to the external magnetic field, and isotropic light plasma components is described. Such a situation presumably establishes in a shock compressed space dusty plasma downstream the shock front. Oblique low-frequency magneto-hydrodynamic waves ($ω\ll ω_{cd}$, $ω_{cd}$ being the dust cyclotron frequency) are shown to be undergone to the mirror instability. Consequences for nonthermal dust destruction behind shock fronts in the inters…
The linear non-modal kinetic theory of the kinetic drift-Alfven instability of plasma shear flows reveals the temporal non-modal growth with growing with time growth rate. The turbulent scattering of the sheared modes on ions accelerates this growth. The instability ceases its growth when the coupling of the drift and Alfven waves violates due to the changing with time frequencies of the drift and Alfven waves in shear flow.
We study a complex plasma under microgravity conditions that is first stabilized with an oscillating electric field. Once the stabilization is stopped, the so-called heartbeat instability develops. We study how the kinetic energy spectrum changes during and after the onset of the instability and compare with the double cascade predicted by Kraichnan and Leith for two-dimensional turbulence. The onset of the instability manifests clearly in the ratio of the reduced rates of cascade of energy and enstrophy and in the power-law exponents of the energy spectra.
It is demonstrated that low frequency shear modes in a strongly coupled, inhomogeneous, dusty plasma can grow on account of an instability involving the dynamical charge fluctuations of the dust grains. The instability is driven by the gradient of the equilibrium dust charge density and is associated with the finite charging time of the dust grains. The present calculations, carried out in the generalized hydrodynamic viscoelastic formalism, also bring out important modifications in the threshold and growth rate of the instability due to collective effects associated with coupling to the compr…
Rayleigh-Taylor and Buoyancy-driven instabilities are very common instabilities for an inhomogeneous medium. We examine here how these instabilities grow for incompressible viscoelastic fluids like a strongly coupled dusty plasma by using incompressible generalized hydrodynamic (i-GHD) fluid model. Since the dust particles are pretty massive, the gravitational attraction of earth has a significant role in its dynamics. In this paper the acceleration due to gravity g and the role of strong coupling in the context of gravitationally stratified dusty plasma fluid have been considered. We find tha…
The dispersion relation of kinetic Alfvén wave in inertial regime is studied in a three component non-degenerate streaming plasma. A lin- ear dispersion relation using fluid- Vlasov equation for quantum plasma is also derived. The quantum correction CQ raised due to the insertion of Bohm potential in Vlasov model causes the suppression in the Alfven wave frequency and the growth rates of instability. A number of analytical expressions are derived for various modes of propagation. It is also found that many system parameters, i.e, streaming velocity, dust charge, num- ber density and quantum co…
It is well known that oscillations at the electron plasma frequency may appear due to instability of the plasma sheath near a positively biased electrode immersed in plasma. This instability is caused by transit-time effects when electrons, collected by this electrode, pass through the sheath. Such oscillations appear as low-power short spikes due to additional ionization of a neutral gas in the electrode vicinity. Herein we present first results obtained when the additional ionization was eliminated. We succeeded to prolong the oscillations during the whole time a positive bias was applied to…
A uniform in space, oscillatory in time plasma equilibrium sustained by a time-dependent current density is analytically and numerically studied resorting to particle-in-cell simulations. The dispersion relation is derived from the Vlasov equation for oscillating equilibrium distribution functions, and used to demonstrate that the plasma has an infinite number of unstable kinetic modes. This instability represents a new kinetic mechanism for the decay of the initial mode of infinite wavelength (or equivalently null wavenumber), for which no classical wave breaking or Landau damping exists. The…
The dense plasma focus (DPF) is a classic Z-pinch plasma device that has been studied for decades as a radiation source. The formation of the m = 0 plasma instability during the compression phase is linked to the generation of high-energy charged particle beams, which, when operated in deuterium, lead to beam-target fusion reactions and the generation of neutron yield. In this paper, we present a technique of seeding the m = 0 instability by employing a hollow in the anode. As the plasma sheath moves along the anode's hollow structure, a low density perturbation is formed and this creates a no…
We present time-resolved observations of Rayleigh--Taylor-instability (RTI) evolution at the interface between an unmagnetized plasma jet colliding with a stagnated, magnetized plasma. The observed instability growth time ($\sim 10$~$μ$s) is consistent with the estimated linear RTI growth rate calculated using experimentally inferred values of density ($\sim 10^{14}$~cm$^{-3}$) and deceleration ($\sim 10^9$~m/s$^2$). The observed mode wavelength ($\gtrsim 1$~cm) nearly doubles within a linear growth time. Theoretical estimates of magnetic and viscous stabilization and idealized magnetohydrodyn…
A generalized plasma model having warm ions, iso-thermal electrons, super-thermal electrons and positrons is considered to theoretically investigate the modulational instability (MI) of ion-acoustic waves (IAWs). A standard nonlinear Schrödinger equation is derived by applying reductive perturbation method to study the MI of IAWs. It is observed that the MI criteria of the IAWs are significantly modified by various plasma parameters. The present results should be useful in understanding the conditions for MI of IAWs which are relevant to both space and laboratory plasma system.
A new transverse mode in a two-stream magnetized quantum plasma is studied by means of a quantum hydrodynamic model, under non-relativistic and ideal Fermi gas assumptions. It is found that Fermi pressure effects induce a minimum cutoff wavelength for instability, unlike the classical case which is unstable for larger wavenumbers. The external magnetic field is also shown to produce a stabilizing effect. Conditions for the applicability of the model and specific parameters for experimental observations are thoroughly discussed.
We analytically and numerically study the analogue of the Parker (magnetic buoyancy) instability in a uniformly rotating plasma screw pinch confined in a cylinder. Uniform plasma rotation is imposed to create a centrifugal acceleration, which mimics the gravity required for the classical Parker instability. The goal of this study is to determine how the Parker instability could be unambiguously identified in a weakly magnetized, rapidly rotating screw pinch, in which the rotation provides an effective gravity and a radially varying azimuthal field is controlled to give conditions for which the…
We investigate the low-frequency wave mode associated with heavy particles and its instability in a collisional complex plasma with drifting ions. The effect of the ion drift on the sound velocity of this mode is discussed. The general condition of the instability is derived for subthermal ion drifts, taking into account strong coupling of the particle component. As a general tendency, strong coupling effects reduce the sound velocity and facilitate the occurrence of the ion drift instability. A wide parameter range is considered from the weakly collisional to strongly collisional regimes for …
We analyze the problem of the beam-plasma instability via the analytical treatment of the so-called Dyson equation. We first compared the prediction of the model constructed by fixing the electric field amplitude with respect to a N-body Hamiltonian numerical simulation. Then, we demonstrate that the shortcomings of such an analytical formulation must be essentially identified with the breaking-down of the self-consistent evolution of the field and the particle distribution function.
The fundamental higher-order Landau plasma modes are known to be generally heavily damped. We show that these modes for the ion component in a weakly ionized plasma can be substantially modified by ion-neutral collisions and a dc electric field driving ion flow so that some of them can become unstable. This instability is expected to naturally occur in presheaths of gas discharges at sufficiently small pressures and thus affect sheaths and discharge structures.
Linear stability analysis of strongly coupled incompressible dusty plasma in presence of shear flow has been carried out using Generalized Hydrodynamical(GH) model. With the proper Galilean invariant GH model, a nonlocal eigenvalue analysis has been done using different velocity profiles. It is shown that the effect of elasticity enhances the growth rate of shear flow driven Kelvin- Helmholtz (KH) instability. The interplay between viscosity and elasticity not only enhances the growth rate but the spatial domain of the instability is also widened. The growth rate in various parameter space and…
The kinetic theory for the cylindrical plasma, produced by the cylindrically symmetric (azimuthal mode number m=0) helicon wave, is developed with accounting for the cylindrical geometry and the radial inhomogeneity of the helicon wave and plasma. This theory reveals macroscale effect of the azimuthal steady rotation of electrons with a radially inhomogeneous angular velocity, caused by radial inhomogeneity of the helicon electric field. It is found that this sheared rotation as well as the electron density and temperature inhomogeneity are responsible for the development of the high frequency…
The Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability is studied in a non-Newtonian dusty plasma with an experimentally verified model [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 98}, 145003 (2007)] of shear flow rate dependent viscosity. The shear flow profile used here is a parabolic type bounded flow. Both the shear thinning and shear thickening properties are investigated in compressible as well as incompressible limits using a linear stability analysis. Like the stabilizing effect of compressibility on the KH instability, the non-Newtonian effect in shear thickening regime could also suppress the instability but on the contr…
Ion-ion instability is excited due to the counter streaming of ion beams in any plasma system. An experiment has been carried out to observe the ion-ion instability in dusty plasma and in presence of different gas compositions viz., H2, Ar, Xe and He. The experiment is performed in a double plasma device consisting of 90 cm in diameter and 120 cm in length and separated by a mesh grid of 81% optical transparency. Glass beads of 10 mm average dust distributions are used as a dust grains for the whole set of experiment and are allowed to fall within a particular region of plasma column inside th…
We demonstrate by computer simulations, laser plasma experiments, and analytic theory that a hitherto unknown instability is excited in the beam plasma system with finite transverse size. This instability is responsible for the generation of magnetic fields at scales comparable to the transverse beam dimension which can be much longer than the electron skin depth scale. This counterintuitive result arises due to radiative leakage associated with finite beam boundaries which are absent in conventional infinite periodic systems considered in earlier simulations as well as theoretical analyses an…
A two-fluid flowing plasma model is applied to describe the plasma rotation and resulted instability evolution in magnetically enhanced vacuum arc thruster (MEVAT). Typical experimental parameters are employed, including plasma density, equilibrium magnetic field, ion and electron temperatures, cathode materials, axial streaming velocity, and azimuthal rotation frequency. It is found that the growth rate of plasma instability increases with growing rotation frequency and field strength, and with descending electron temperature and atomic weight, for which the underlying physics are explained. …
Filamentation due to the growth of a Weibel-type instability was observed in the interaction of a pair of counter-streaming, ablatively-driven plasma flows, in a supersonic, collisionless regime relevant to astrophysical collisionless shocks. The flows were created by irradiating a pair of opposing plastic (CH) foils with 1.8 kJ, 2-ns laser pulses on the OMEGA EP laser system. Ultrafast laser-driven proton radiography was used to image the Weibel-generated electromagnetic fields. The experimental observations are in good agreement with the analytical theory of the Weibel instability and with p…
Dedicated experiments on melting of 2D plasma crystals were carried out. The melting was always accompanied by spontaneous growth of the particle kinetic energy, suggesting a universal plasma-driven mechanism underlying the process. By measuring three principal dust-lattice (DL) wave modes simultaneously, it is unambiguously demonstrated that the melting occurs due to the resonance coupling between two of the DL modes. The variation of the wave modes with the experimental conditions, including the emergence of the resonant (hybrid) branch, reveals exceptionally good agreement with the theory o…
We present an investigation for the generation of intense magnetic fields in dense plasmas with an anisotropic electron Fermi-Dirac distribution. For this purpose, we use a new linear dispersion relation for transverse waves in the Wigner-Maxwell dense quantum plasma system. Numerical analysis of the dispersion relation reveals the scaling of the growth rate as a function of the Fermi energy and the temperature anisotropy. The nonlinear saturation level of the magnetic fields is found through fully kinetic simulations, which indicates that the final amplitudes of the magnetic fields are propor…
An axial-azimuthal two-dimensional Hall thruster discharge model was developed for analyzing gradient drift instability (GDI) and cross-field electron transport enhancement induced solely by the GDI. A hybrid particle-fluid model was used for the partially ionized plasma, where the inertialess electron fluid in the quasineutral plasma was assumed. A nonoscillatory numerical method was proposed for the potential solver in the electron fluid model to avoid numerical instability and analyze the physics of GDI accurately. A simulation is performed for a 1 kW-class anode-layer-type Hall thruster, a…
Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations of relativistic flowing plasmas are of key interest to several fields of physics (including e.g. laser-wakefield acceleration, when viewed in a Lorentz-boosted frame), but remain sometimes infeasible due to the well-known numerical Cherenkov instability (NCI). In this article, we show that, for a plasma drifting at a uniform relativistic velocity, the NCI can be eliminated by simply integrating the PIC equations in Galilean coordinates that follow the plasma (also sometimes known as comoving coordinates) within a spectral analytical framework. The elimination…
Within the framework of quasilinear theory it has been found that when radio bursts of III type are generated by the inhomogeneous system of electron beam - solar wind plasma, only time of development of the primary stage of instability, i.e., agnetohydrodynamic, is more than the total time of relaxation of an electron beam derived within the homogeneous model. During the development of hydrodynamic instability the electron beam is spread from the Sun to the distance of 4 astonomical unities. The hydrodynamic stage is followed by the development of kinetic instability leading, ultimately, to t…
