The existence and properties of phase-space structures in current-carrying pair plasmas is studied by means of the finite amplitude expressions of the pseudo-potential method. Emphasis is given to double layers, solitary structures and periodic waves. The results can be applied to electron-positron plasmas as well as to plasmas containing heavier charged particles with the same mass and opposite charges, such as fullerene ions and dust particles. They can also help to understand numerical simulations that showed the spontaneous formation of phase-space holes in linearly stable regimes.
The nonlinear frequency shift is derived in a transparent asymptotic form for intense Langmuir waves in general collisionless plasma. The formula describes both fluid and kinetic effects simultaneously. The fluid nonlinearity is expressed, for the first time, through the plasma dielectric function, and the kinetic nonlinearity accounts for both smooth distributions and trapped-particle beams. Various known limiting scalings are reproduced as special cases. The calculation avoids differential equations and can be extended straightforwardly to other nonlinear plasma waves.
The nonlinear evolution of the Weibel instability driven by the anisotropy of the electron distribution function in a collisionless plasma is investigated in a spatially one-dimensional configuration with a Vlasov code in a two-dimensional velocity space. It is found that the electromagnetic fields generated by this instability cause a strong deformation of the electron distribution function in phase space, corresponding to highly filamented magnetic vortices. Eventually, these deformations lead to the generation of short wavelength Langmuir modes that form highly localized electrostatic struc…
The structure of Langmuir plasma waves carrying a finite angular orbital momentum is revised in the paraxial optics approximation. It is shown that the kinetic effects related to higher-order momenta of the electron distribution function lead to coupling of Laguerre-Gaussian modes and result in modification of the wave dispersion and damping. The theoretical analysis is compared to the three-dimensional particle-in-cell numerical simulations for a mode with orbital momentum l = 2. It is demonstrated that propagation of such a plasma wave is accompanied with generation of quasi-static axial and…
In strictly collisionless electrostatic shocks, the ion distribution function can develop discontinuities along phase-space separatrices, due to partial reflection of the ion population. In this paper, we depart from the strictly collisionless regime and present a semi-analytical model for weakly collisional kinetic shocks. The model is used to study the effect of small but finite collisionalities on electrostatic shocks, and they are found to smooth out these discontinuities into growing boundary layers. More importantly, ions diffuse into and accumulate in the previously empty regions of pha…
We have extended previous kinetic results to compute the exchange correction to the electrostatic electron susceptibility for arbitrary frequencies and wavenumbers in the low temperature limit. This has allowed us to make a general comparison with a much used hydrodynamic expression for exchange effects. It is found that the hydrodynamic expression gives a useful approximation when the phase velocity is roughly a factor $2.5$ larger than the Fermi velocity. For low phase velocities, as for ion-acoustic waves, wave-particle interaction leads to a strong enhancement of the exchange correction an…
An analytical theory is proposed for the kinetic electrostatic electron nonlinear (KEEN) waves originally found in simulations by Afeyan et al [arXiv:1210.8105]. We suggest that KEEN waves represent saturated states of the negative mass instability (NMI) reported recently by Dodin et al [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 215006 (2013)]. Due to the NMI, trapped electrons form macroparticles that produce field oscillations at harmonics of the bounce frequency. At large enough amplitudes, these harmonics can phase-lock to the main wave and form stable nonlinear dissipationless structures that are nonstationa…
Recently laser induced fusion with simultaneous volume ignition, a spin-off from relativistic heavy ion collisions, was proposed, where implanted nanoantennas regulated and amplified the light absorption in the fusion target. Studies of resilience of the nanoantennas was published recently in vacuum. These studies are extended to nanoantennas embedded into a polymer, which modifies the nanoantenna's lifetime and absorption properties.
The kinetic theory for the instabilities driven by the Hall current with a sheared current velocity, which has the method of the shearing modes or the so-called non-modal approach as its foundation, is developed. The developed theory predicts that in the Hall plasma with the inhomogeneous electric field, the separate spatial Fourier mode of the perturbations is determined in the frame convected with one of the plasma components. Because of the different shearing of the ion and electron flows in the Hall plasma, this mode is perceived by the second component as the Doppler-shifted continuously …
A nitrogen gas Raman cell system has been constructed to shift a 70 J 527 nm laser beam to 600 nm with 20 J of energy. The 600 nm probe and a 200J, 527 nm pump beam were optically mixed in a laser produced (gas jet) plasma. The beating of the two laser beams formed a ponderomotive force that can drive Kinetic Electrostatic Electron Nonlinear (KEEN) waves discovered in Vlasov-Poisson simulations by Afeyan et al [1,2]. KEEN waves were detected in these experiments where traditional plasma theory would declare there to be a spectral gap (ie no linear waves possible). The detection was done using …
We study theoretically the exchange of angular momentum between electromagnetic and electrostatic waves in a plasma, due to the stimulated Raman and Brillouin backscattering processes. Angular momentum states for plasmon and phonon fields are introduced for the first time. We demonstrate that these states can be excited by nonlinear wave mixing, associated with the scattering processes. This could be relevant for plasma diagnostics, both in laboratory and in space. Nonlinearly coupled paraxial equations and instability growth rates are derived.
Non-modal kinetic theory of the stability of the compressed-sheared plasma flows generated by the inhomogeneous microscale turbulence in the tokamak edge plasma
Using Boltzmann Vlasov kinetic model with the flat-top non-Maxwellian distributed electrons and ions, a velocity power law energetic tail, known as the generalized r, q distribution, a current-less electrostatic instability namely ion acoustic which is driven by a stream of solar wind plasma is studied here. The instability threshold is affected and depends upon the spectral indices r and q. It is found that the growth rate increases with the decrease of spectral index. Moreover, such kinetic instability has also been discussed for a three species electron-ion-dust plasma using the generalized…
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 kinetic analyses are quite important when it comes to understand the particle behavior in any device as they start to deviate from continuum nature. In the present study, kinetic simulations are performed using Particle-in-Cell (PIC) method to analyze the behavior of ions inside a cylindrical Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion (IECF) device which is being developed as a tabletop neutron source. Here, the lighter ions, like deuterium are accelerated by applying an electrostatic field between the chamber wall (anode) and the cathode (cylindrical gridded wire), placed at the center of …
This work studies the fundamental plasma processes involved in the neutralization of an ion beam's space-charge by electrons emitted by a filament using Particle-in-Cell simulations. While filament neutralization is economical, previous experiments have shown that a variety of waves become excited in this process that limit the space-charge neutralization. In this work, the formation and movement of electrostatic solitary waves(ESWs), which have low dissipation rates, are characterized for 2D planar and 3D cylindrical beams and are observed to generate waves that survive for a long time and sl…
The electrostatic stability of electron-positron plasmas is investigated in the point-dipole and Z-pinch limits of dipole geometry. The kinetic dispersion relation for sub-bounce-frequency instabilities is derived and solved. For the zero-Debye-length case, the stability diagram is found to exhibit singular behavior. However, when the Debye length is non-zero, a fluid mode appears, which resolves the observed singularity, and also demonstrates that both the temperature and density gradients can drive instability. It is concluded that a finite Debye length is necessary to determine the stabilit…
A formalism for treating modulational interactions of electrostatic fields in collisionless quantum plasmas is developed, based on the kinetic Wigner-Poisson model of quantum plasma. This formalism can be used in a range of problems of nonlinear interaction between electrostatic fields in a quantum plasma, such as development of turbulence, self-organization, as well as transition from the weak turbulent state to strong turbulence. In particular, using this formalism, we obtain the kinetic quantum Zakharov equations, that describe nonlinear coupling of high frequency Langmuir waves to low freq…
The kinetic theory of collisionless electrostatic shocks resulting from the collision of plasma slabs with different temperatures and densities is presented. The theoretical results are confirmed by self-consistent particle-in-cell simulations, revealing the formation and stable propagation of electrostatic shocks with very high Mach numbers ($M \gg 10$), well above the predictions of the classical theories for electrostatic shocks.
Boundary plasma physics plays an important role in tokamak confinement, but is difficult to simulate in a gyrokinetic code due to the scale-inseparable nonlocal multi-physics in magnetic separatrix and open magnetic field geometry. Neutral particles are also an important part of the boundary plasma physics. In the present paper, noble electrostatic gyrokinetic techniques to simulate the flux-driven, low-beta electrostatic boundary plasma is reported. Gyrokinetic ions and drift-kinetic electrons are utilized without scale-separation between the neoclassical and turbulence dynamics. It is found …
Revisiting kinetic electrostatic electron non-linear (KEEN) waves in the presence of dynamical ions
Centre for Mathematical Plasma Astrophysics, Department of Mathematics, KU Leuven（鲁汶大学数学系等离子体天体物理学中心）；KU Leuven（鲁汶大学）；IRFM - CEA Cadarache（CEA卡达拉舍聚变研究研究所）；CEA（法国原子能和替代能源委员会）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy（比利时皇家空间气象研究所）
The existence and properties of low Mach-number ($M \gtrsim 1$) electrostatic collisionless shocks are investigated with a semi-analytical solution for the shock structure. We show that the properties of the shock obtained in the semi-analytical model can be well reproduced in fully kinetic Eulerian Vlasov-Poisson simulations, where the shock is generated by the decay of an initial density discontinuity. Using this semi-analytical model, we study the effect of electron-to-ion temperature ratio and presence of impurities on both the maximum shock potential and Mach number. We find that even a s…
Nonlinear stationary structures formed in a cold plasma with immobile ions in the presence of a relativistic electron current beam have been investigated analytically in the collisionless limit. These are cold plasma version of the relativistic Berstein-Greene-Kruskal (BGK) waves. The structure profile is governed by the ratio of maximum electrostatic field energy density to the relativistic kinetic energy density of the electron beam, {\it i.e.}, $κ_{R} = E_{m}/ (8 πn_{0} (γ_{0}-1)m_{0} c^{2})^{1/2}$, where $E_{m}$ is the maximum electric field associated with the nonlinear structure and $γ_{…
We describe the implementation of 1d1v and 1d2v Vlasov and Fokker-Planck kinetic solvers with adaptive mesh refinement in phase space (AMPS) and coupling these kinetic solvers to Poisson equation solver for electric field. We demonstrate that coupling AMPS kinetic and electrostatic solvers can be done efficiently without splitting phase-space transport. We show that Eulerian fluid and kinetic solvers with dynamically adaptive Cartesian mesh can be used for simulations of collisionless plasma expansion into vacuum. The Vlasov-Fokker-Planck solver is demonstrated for the analysis of electron acc…
We examine the properties of linear electrostatic waves in unmagnetized quantum and classical plasmas consisting of one or two populations of electrons with analytically tractable distribution functions in the presence of a stationary neutralising ion background. Beginning with the kinetic quantum plasma longitudinal susceptibility, we assess the effects due to increasing complexity of the background distribution function. Firstly, we analyse dispersion and Landau damping in one-component plasmas and consider distribution functions with a variety of analytical properties: the Dirac delta funct…
The kinetic study of plasma sheaths is critical, among other things, to understand the deposition of heat on walls, the effect of sputtering, and contamination of the plasma with detrimental impurities. The plasma sheath also provides a boundary condition and can often have a significant global impact on the bulk plasma. In this paper, kinetic studies of classical sheaths are performed with the continuum code, Gkeyll, that directly solves the Vlasov-Poisson/Maxwell equations. The code uses a novel version of the finite-element discontinuous Galerkin (DG) scheme that conserves energy in the con…
A Neural Operator Closure for Landau Damping in Electrostatic Plasma
Queen Mary University of London（伦敦大学玛丽女王学院）；University of Colorado, Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校）；Institute for Plasma Science and Technology, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche（意大利国家研究委员会等离子科学与技术研究所）
The past studies treated the perturbed distribution of circulating electrons as adiabatic one when studying the dispersion relation of electrostatic geodesic acoustic mode(GAM). In this paper, the flow of electron geodesic current (FEGC) is added to modify this adiabatic distribution. Based on the drift kinetic theory, it is found that FEGC obviously increases the magnitude of the standard GAM's frequency and reduces its damping rate. The increase of frequency results from the contribution of FEGC to the radial flow. The reason for the reduction of damping rate is that when the effect of FEGC …
We have found, using 1D periodic Vlasov-Poisson simulations, new nonlinear, nonstationary, stable, long lived, coherent structures in phase space, called kinetic electrostatic electron nonlinear (KEEN) waves. Ponderomotively driven for a short period of time, at a particular frequency and wavenumber, well inside the band gap that was thought to exist between electron plasma and electron acoustic wave frequencies, KEEN waves are seen to self-consistently form, and persist for thousands of plasma periods. KEEN waves are comprised of 4 or more significant phase-locked harmonic modes which persist…
The solar wind wake behind the moon is studied with 1D electrostatic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations using a physical ion to electron mass ratio (unlike prior investigations); the simulations also apply more generally to supersonic flow of dense magnetized plasma past non-magnetic objects. A hybrid electrostatic Boltzmann electron treatment is first used to investigate the ion stability in the absence of kinetic electron effects, showing that the ions are two-stream unstable for downstream wake distances (in lunar radii) greater than about three times the solar wind Mach number. Simulations…
Eulerian simulations of the Vlasov-Poisson equations have been employed to analyze the excitation of slow electrostatic fluctuations (with phase speed close to the electron thermal speed), due to a beam-plasma interaction, and their propagation in linear and nonlinear regime. In 1968, O'Neil and Malmberg [Phys. Fluids {\bf 11}, 1754 (1968)] dubbed these waves "beam modes". In the present paper, it is shown that, in the presence of a cold and low density electron beam, these beam modes can become unstable and then survive Landau damping unlike the Langmuir waves. When an electron beam is launch…
Electrostatic (E) fields associated with the interaction of a well-controlled, high-power, nanosecond laser pulse with an underdense plasma are diagnosed by proton radiography. Using a current 3D wave propagation code equipped with nonlinear and nonlocal hydrodynamics, we can model the measured E-fields that are driven by the laser ponderomotive force in the region where the laser undergoes filamentation. However, strong fields of up to 110 MV/m measured in the first millimeter of propagation cannot be reproduced in the simulations. This could point to the presence of unexpected strong thermal…
The plasma sheath sets a stage for a strongly nonlinear coupling of the thermal, kinetic, and electric energies of plasma in a non-equilibrium, open environment. The pressure, velocity, and electrostatic potential profiles depend strongly on the boundary condition given on the internal side (pre-sheath). By controlling the boundary values of the heat flux and the ion Mach number, we solve a set of equations for the ion temperature and the electrostatic potential. The boundary values of the ion velocity and the electrostatic potential vary due to the change of the boundary ion temperature. When…
We derive the kinetic theory of fluctuations in physically and numerically stable particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of electrostatic plasmas. The starting point is the single-time correlations at the simulation start between the statistical fluctuations of weighted densities of macroparticle centers in the plasma particle phase-space. The single-time correlations at all time steps and in each spatial grid cell are then determined from the Laplace-Fourier transforms of the discretized Klimontovich-like equation for the macroparticles and Maxwell's equations for the fields as computed by modern…
Active Plasma Resonance Spectroscopy (APRS) denotes a class of diagnostic techniques which utilize the natural ability of plasmas to resonate on or near the electron plasma frequency. One particular class of APRS can be described in an abstract notation based on functional analytic methods in electrostatic approximation. These methods allow for a general solution of the kinetic model in arbitrary geometry. This solution is given as the response function of the probe-plasma system and is defined by the resolvent of an appropriate dynamical operator. The general response predicts an additional d…
We present a quantum kinetic theory for spin-$1/2$ particles, including the spin-orbit interaction, retaining particle dispersive effects to all orders in $\hbar$, based on a gauge-invariant Wigner transformation. Compared to previous works, the spin-orbit interaction leads to a new term in the kinetic equation, containing both the electric and magnetic fields. Like other models with spin-orbit interactions, our model features "hidden momentum". As an example application, we calculate the dispersion relation for linear electrostatic waves in a magnetized plasma, and electromagnetic waves in a …
Magnetized high energy density physics offers new opportunities for observing magnetic field-related physics for the first time in the laser-plasma context. We focus on one such phenomenon, which is the ability of a laser-irradiated magnetized plasma to amplify a seed magnetic field. We performed a series of fully kinetic 3D simulations of magnetic field amplification by a picosecond-scale relativistic laser pulse of intensity $4.2\times 10^{18}$ W/cm$^2$ incident on a thin foil. We observe axial magnetic field amplification from an initial 0.1 kT seed to 1.5 kT over a volume of several cubic …
We present a geometric Particle-in-Cell (PIC) algorithm on two-dimensional (2D) unstructured meshes for studying electrostatic perturbations in magnetized plasmas. In this method, ions are treated as fully kinetic particles, and electrons are described by the adiabatic response. The PIC method is derived from a discrete variational principle on unstructured meshes. To preserve the geometric structure of the system, the discrete variational principle requires that the electric field is interpolated using Whitney 1-forms, the charge is deposited using Whitney 0-forms, and the electric field is c…
A variety of kinetic waves develop in the solar wind. The relationship between these waves and larger-scale structures, such as current sheets and ongoing turbulence remain a topic of investigation. Similarly, the instabilities producing ion-acoustic waves in the solar wind remains an open question. The goals of this paper are to investigate kinetic electrostatic Langmuir and ion-acoustic waves in the solar wind at 0.5 AU and determine whether current sheets and associated streaming instabilities can produce the observed waves. The relationship between these waves and currents is investigated …
Imposing quasineutrality on electrostatic plasmas via the Dirac theory of constraints
University of Ioannina（约阿尼纳大学）；Democritus University of Thrace（色雷斯德谟克利特大学）；The University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）；Université Côte d’Azur（蔚蓝海岸大学）
The longitudinal dynamics of a resonantly driven Langmuir wave are analyzed in the limit that the growth of the electrostatic wave is slow compared to the bounce frequency. Using simple physical arguments, the nonlinear distribution function is shown to be nearly gaussian in the canonical particle action, with a slowly evolving mean and fixed variance. Self-consistency with the electrostatic potential provide the basic properties of the nonlinear distribution function including a frequency shift that agrees well with driven, electrostatic particle simulations. This extends earlier work on nonl…
With an implicit Particle-in-cell/Monte Carlo model, capacitively coupled plasmas are studied in two-dimensional and axisymmetric geometry. Self-bias dc voltage effects are self-consistently considered. Due to finite length effects, the self-bias dc voltages show sophisticating relations with the electrode areas. Two-dimensional kinetic effects are also illuminated. Compare to the fluid mode, PIC/MC model is numerical-diffusion-free and thus finer properties of the plasmas are simulated.
We theoretically explore the possibility of sausage instabilities developing on top of a kink instability in lengthening current-carrying magnetic flux tubes. Observations indicate that the dynamics of magnetic flux tubes in our cosmos and terrestrial experiments can involve topological changes faster than time scales predicted by resistive magnetohydrodynamics. Recent laboratory experiments suggest that hierarchies of instabilities, such as kink and Rayleigh-Taylor, could be responsible for initiating fast topological changes by locally accessing two fluid and kinetic regimes. Sausage instabi…
Kinetic simulations and theory demonstrate that whistler waves can excite oblique, short-wavelength fluctuations through secondary drift instabilities if a population of sufficiently cold plasma is present. The excited modes lead to heating of the cold populations and damping of the primary whistler waves. The instability threshold depends on the density and temperature of the cold population and can be relatively small if the temperature of the cold population is sufficiently low. This mechanism may thus play a significant role in controlling amplitude of whistlers in the regions of the Earth…
picFoam is a fully kinetic electrostatic Particle-in-Cell(PIC) solver, including Monte Carlo Collisions(MCC), for non-equilibrium plasma research in the open-source framework of OpenFOAM. The solver's modular design, based on the same principles used in OpenFOAM, makes it highly flexible, by allowing the user to choose different methods at run time, and extendable, by building upon templated modular classes. The implementation of the PIC method employing the finite volume method, allows it to simulate on arbitrary geometries in one to three dimensions. OpenFOAM's barycentric particle tracking …
The multipole resonance probe is one of the recently developed measurement devices to measure plasma parameter like electron density and temperature based on the concept of active plasma resonance spectroscopy. The dynamical interaction between the probe and the plasma in electrostatic, kinetic description can be modeled in an abstract notation based on functional analytic methods. These methods provide the opportunity to derive a general solution, which is given as the response function of the probe-plasma system. It is defined by the matrix elements of the resolvent of an appropriate dynamic…
Active plasma resonance spectroscopy (APRS) refers to a class of plasma diagnostic methods that use the ability of plasma to resonate at or near the electron plasma frequency for diagnostic purposes. The planar multipole resonance probe (pMRP) is an optimized realization of APRS. It has a non-invasive structure and allows simultaneous measurement of the electron density, electron temperature, and electron-neutral collision frequency. Previous work has investigated the pMRP through the Drude model and collision-less kinetic model. The Drude model misses important kinetic effects such as collisi…
A nonlinear kinetic equation for nonrelativistic quantum plasma with electromagnetic interaction of particles is obtained in the Hartree's mean-field approximation. It is cast in a convenient form of Vlasov-Boltzmann-type equation with "quantum interference integral", that allows for relatively straightforward modification of existing classical Vlasov codes to incorporate quantum effects (quantum statistics and quantum interference of overlapping particles wave functions), without changing the bulk of the codes. Such modification (upgrade) of existing Vlasov codes may provide a direct and effe…
Active Plasma Resonance Spectroscopy (APRS) is a well-established plasma diagnostic method: a radio frequency signal is coupled into the plasma via a probe or antenna, excites it to oscillate, and the response is evaluated through a mathematical model. The majority of APRS probes are invasive and perturb the plasma by their physical presence. The planar Multipole Resonance Probe (pMRP) solves this problem: it can be integrated into the chamber wall and minimizes the perturbation. Previous work has studied the pMRP in the frame of the Drude model, but it misses important effects like collision-…
