High-density fixed point for radially compressed single-component plasmas

Rotating electric fields are used to compress electron plasmas confined in a Penning-Malmberg trap. Bifurcation and hysteresis are observed between low-density and high-density steady states as a function of the applied electric field amplitude and frequency. These observations are explained in terms of torque-balanced fixed points using a simple model of the torques on the plasma. Perturbation experiments near the high-density fixed point are used to determine the magnitude, frequency, and voltage dependence of the drive torque. The broader implications of these results are discussed.     

Vacuum heating evaluation for plasmas of exponentially decreasing density profile

Ultra-short pulse lasers have opened a regime of laser-plasma interaction where plasmas have scale lengths shorter than the laser wavelength and allow the possibility of generating near-solid density plasmas. The interaction of high-intensity laser beams with sharply bounded high-density and small scale length plasmas is considered. Absorption of the laser energy associated with the mechanism of dragging electrons out of the plasma into the vacuum and sending them back into the plasma with the electric field component along the density gradient, so called vacuum heating, is studied. An exponentially decreasing electron density profile is assumed. The vector potential of the electromagnetic field propagating through the plasma is calculated and the behaviour of the electric and magnetic components of the electromagnetic field is studied. The fraction of laser power absorbed in this process is calculated and plotted versus the laser beam incidence angle, illumination energy, and the plasma scale length.     

Generation of Uniform Plasmas for Beat Wave Experiments

The laser plasma "beat wave" mechanism for the generation of ultrahigh electric fields requires plasmas of several meters length with density uniformity of about 1 percent. Multiphoton ionization of molecular hydrogen gas at a pressure of a few torr provides a scalable mechanism for generating these plasmas using the same laser beams that drive the beat wave. We describe measurements of electron density, temperature, and uniformity of plasmas generated by a frequency doubled Neodymium glass laser, at an irradiance of about 1014 W · cm-2. The plasma density corresponds to 100-percent ionization and is measured to be uniform to within the measurement errors over a length of 8 mm.     

紫外激光探针在Z-pinch中的应用

报道了基于脉冲宽度为16 ns、波长为266 nm、总能量为30 mJ、时间分辨为1.6 ns的紫外激光四分幅阴影成像系统,用于研究Z-pinch产生等离子体与在丝阵负载中心放置塑料泡沫材料相互作用输运规律,研究动态黑腔形成过程的主要物理因素。使用高能高密度激光束透射等离子体,依据等离子体对激光束吸收衰减特性诊断激光束通过等离子体后的空间强度分布,通过理论计算获得等离子体空间密度分布,获得等离子体产生的早期稳定性、箍缩速度等规律。实验研究表明,在X射线峰值前约-25 ns等离子体开始压缩塑料泡沫,在峰值前-5 ns压缩到最小,之后泡沫开始膨胀。在X射线峰值时刻泡沫直径由3 mm压缩到直径约为1 mm,对泡沫的最大压缩比约为9倍。实验测量压缩速度约为3.3106 cm/s,并给出了不同时刻的磁流体不稳定结构分布。     

紫外激光探针在Z-pinch中的应用北大核心CSCD

报道了基于脉冲宽度为16ns、波长为266nm、总能量为30mJ、时间分辨为1.6ns的紫外激光四分幅阴影成像系统,用于研究Z-pinch产生等离子体与在丝阵负载中心放置塑料泡沫材料相互作用输运规律,研究动态黑腔形成过程的主要物理因素。使用高能高密度激光束透射等离子体,依据等离子体对激光束吸收衰减特性诊断激光束通过等离子体后的空间强度分布,通过理论计算获得等离子体空间密度分布,获得等离子体产生的早期稳定性、箍缩速度等规律。实验研究表明,在X射线峰值前约-25ns等离子体开始压缩塑料泡沫,在峰值前-5ns压缩到最小,之后泡沫开始膨胀。在X射线峰值时刻泡沫直径由3mm压缩到直径约为1mm,对泡沫的最大压缩比约为9倍。实验测量压缩速度约为3.3×10~6 cm/s,并给出了不同时刻的磁流体不稳定结构分布。     

柱形等离子体辐射场和阻抗的数值计算

由柱形非磁化等离子体色散关系，得到信号沿柱形等离子体传输波矢空间分布，再根据天线方程推导得到柱形等离子体在轴向密度均匀、不均匀情况下辐射方向图、辐射阻抗与增益等参数.理论计算结果与实验都证明了柱形等离子体辐射方向图随等离子体参数变化而改变，同时实验结果表明，重新得到的数值计算结果更加精确，更加符合实际测量结果，这对等离子体作为天线传输具有重要的参考价值. 关键词： 柱形等离子体 辐射阻抗 辐射方向图     

高强度激光与等离子体相互作用中的受激Raman级联散射、光子凝聚以及大振幅电磁孤立子的产生与加速

应用一维相对论电磁粒子模拟程序，详细研究了线性极化强激光入射到无碰撞稀疏密度长等离子体中引起的受激Raman散射、Raman级联散射、级联散射到光子凝聚、以及大振幅电磁孤立子的产生与加速. 通过研究发现：在适当的激光振幅和等离子体状态下，强的光子凝聚现象会导致大振幅电磁孤立子的产生，电磁孤立子可以以静止、向后以及向前加速的形式存在；在密度均匀的等离子体中，电磁孤立子的加速不仅依赖于激光振幅而且依赖于等离子体的长度；电磁孤立子的电磁频率大约为未扰动电子等离子体振荡频率的二分之一左右，孤立子内电磁场的电场具有半周期结构，相应电磁场的磁场以及静电场则具有一个完整的周期结构. 关键词： 粒子模拟 受激Raman散射 Raman级联散射 光子凝聚 电磁孤立子     

Influence of vacuum space on formation of potential sheath in plasmas

Properties of potential sheaths developed in plasmas are investigated in terms of the plasma Debye length and the dimension of vacuum space. Biased plasma potential and the potential profile depend very sensitively on the geometrical configuration of plasma and vacuum space. The potential sheath is never developed near electrodes in high-density plasmas where the Debye length is much less than the dimension of the vacuum space. In this case, most of the potential drops occur in the vacuum space and almost no electric field exists inside the plasma. Parametric investigation of the potential sheath in terms of the vacuum-space and plasma dimensions is carried out.     

On the parametric excitation of surface oscillations of a cold plasma

The excitation of surface oscillations of cold plasmas is studied for external electric fields perpendicular to the plasma density gradient. Boundary conditions for electromagnetic fields on the plane boundary between plasmas with different densities are derived, and the dispersion relation for the excitation of the surface modes is obtained. The effects of metallic walls of a vacuum chamber are considered, together with the excitation of surface oscillations of a plasma slab immersed in a plasma with different density.     

New source of dense, cryogenic positron plasmas

We have developed a new method, based on the ballistic transfer of preaccumulated plasmas, to obtain large and dense positron plasmas in a cryogenic environment. The method involves transferring plasmas emanating from a region with a low magnetic field (0.14 T) and relatively high pressure (10(-9) mbar) into a 15 K Penning-Malmberg trap immersed in a 3 T magnetic field with a base pressure better than 10(-13) mbar. The achieved positron accumulation rate in the high field cryogenic trap is more than one and a half orders of magnitude higher than the previous most efficient UHV compatible scheme. Subsequent stacking resulted in a plasma containing more than 1.2 x 10(9) positrons, which is a factor 4 higher than previously reported. Using a rotating wall electric field, plasmas containing about 20 x 10(6) positrons were compressed to a density of 2.6 x 10(10) cm(-3). This is a factor of 6 improvement over earlier measurements.     

Feed optimization for the slotted line antenna for high-densityplasma production

Investigations on the optimization of feed structures for exciting the slotted line antenna for high-density plasma production are presented. Each feed structure used (except the direct feed) excites a preferred component of the wave electric/magnetic field. It is seen that the efficacy of plasma production using the different feeds depends directly on the relative importance of the field components (which the feeds excite) for the flow wave mode of the antenna. The optimal feed is shown to be a dipole antenna, oriented so as to excite the radial component of the electric field within the slotted line structure. The plasma characterization results as a function of the input microwave power and the magnetic field in the antenna region are also presented and discussed. The ability of the antenna to maintain high-density plasmas well away from electron-cyclotron resonance is demonstrated     

Electronic detection of collective modes of an ultracold plasma

Using a new technique to directly detect current induced on a nearby electrode, we measure plasma oscillations in ultracold plasmas, which are influenced by the inhomogeneous and time-varying density and changing neutrality. Electronic detection avoids heating and evaporation dynamics associated with previous measurements and allows us to test the importance of the plasma neutrality. We apply dc and pulsed electric fields to control the electron loss rate and find that the charge imbalance of the plasma has a significant effect on the resonant frequency, in excellent agreement with recent predictions suggesting coupling to an edge mode.     

Kinetic two-dimensional modeling of inductively coupled plasmasbased on a hybrid kinetic approach

In this paper, we present a two-dimensional (2-D) kinetic model for low-pressure inductively coupled discharges. The kinetic treatment of the plasma electrons is based on a hybrid kinetic scheme in which the range of electron energies is divided into two subdomains. In the low energy range the electron distribution function is determined from the traditional nonlocal approximation. In the high energy part the complete spatially dependent Boltzmann equation is solved. The scheme provides computational efficiency and enables inclusion of electron-electron collisions which are important in low-pressure high-density plasmas. The self-consistent scheme is complemented by a 2-D fluid model for the ions and the solution of the complex wave equation for the RF electric field. Results of this model are compared to experimental results. Good agreement in terms of plasma density and potential profiles is observed. In particular, the model is capable of reproducing the transition from on-axis to off-axis peaked density profiles as observed in experiments which underlines the significant improvements compared to models purely based on the traditional nonlocal approximation     

Laser acceleration of ion bunches at the front surface of overdense plasmas

The acceleration of ions in the interaction of high intensity laser pulses with overdense plasmas is investigated with particle-in-cell simulations. For circular polarization of the laser pulses, high-density ion bunches moving into the plasma are generated at the laser-plasma interaction surface. A simple analytical model accounts for the numerical observations and provides scaling laws for the ion bunch energy and generation time as a function of pulse intensity and plasma density.     

Large amplitude electromagnetic solitons in intense laser plasma interaction

This paper shows that the standing, backward- and forward-accelerated large amplitude relativistic electromagnetic solitons induced by intense laser pulse in long underdense collisionless homogeneous plasmas can be observed by particle simulations. In addition to the inhomogeneity of the plasma density, the acceleration of the solitons also depends upon not only the laser amplitude but also the plasma length. The electromagnetic frequency of the solitons is between about half and one of the unperturbed electron plasma frequency. The electrostatic field inside the soliton has a one-cycle structure in space, while the transverse electric and magnetic fields have half-cycle and one-cycle structure respectively. Analytical estimates for the existence of the solitons and their electromagnetic frequencies qualitatively coincide with our simulation results.     

Measurement of density fluctuations on the JIPP T-IIU tokamak via an HCN laser scattering

Observation of density fluctuations in tokamak plasmas is important to study the plasma confinement and to perform high power heating of the plasma. We observed the density fluctuations by means of an HCN laser scattering method during rf heating in the ion-cyclotron range of frequency on a tokamak plasma.The density fluctuations at the drift wave frequency are not enhanced so much by the heating, but the frequency spectrum is shifted to higher frequency. The increase of the density fluctuation level during the heating has been observed only in low-frequency region owing to MHD activity.     

Interferometry of flashboard and cable-gun plasma opening switcheson Hawk

Interferometry of plasma opening switch (POS) plasmas on the Hawk generator has shown many important features of the plasma evolution during conduction and opening. Opening occurs when a low-density region forms at a radial location determined by plasma redistribution during the conduction phase, consistent with J×B forces and the measured plasma distributions produced by the sources alone. High neutral densities have been detected in the POS region during conduction. Low-density plasma appears between the POS and the load at the time current appears in the load, and high-density plasmas appear there later in time. There are two important differences between the density evolution of POS's utilizing flashboard and cable-gun plasma sources. 1) There is a substantial (two-three times) increase in the electron inventory during conduction using cable guns that is not detected using flashboards. This is attributed, primarily, to ionization of ions and neutrals for the cable-gun case. 2) The conduction scaling with plasma density implies that the cable-gun POS has an effective ion mass/charge ratio about double that for the flashboard POS     

磁化等离子体光子晶体的FDTD分析

磁化等离子体光子晶体是磁化等离子体和介质(真空)构成的人工周期性结构.本文用磁化等离子体的分段线形电流密度卷积(PLCDRC)时域有限差分(FDTD)算法分析了磁化等离子体光子晶体特性.分析了磁化等离子体参数对电磁带隙的影响.从时域的角度分析了高斯脉冲在磁化等离子体光子晶体中的传播过程，给出了时域反射和透射波形.从频域的角度给出了磁化等离子体光子晶体的电磁反射系数和透射系数，并对结果进行了分析. 关键词： 磁化等离子体 光子晶体 时域有限差分法     

激光脉冲在等离子体中的压缩分裂

通过数值求解一维非线性薛定谔方程,研究了圆偏振入射激光脉冲在初始密度范围为1/4到略低于1倍临界密度的等离子体中的自压缩和分裂现象. 提高等离子体密度和入射激光强度以及减小脉冲宽度可以在更短的传输距离获得有效的激光脉冲压缩,压缩后的脉冲半高宽度可达到初始脉冲半高宽度的1/35,甚至更小. 这种压缩是激光脉冲在等离子体中形成高阶孤子的过程中产生的,可以获得比在稀薄等离子体中更好的压缩比例. 数值计算的结果给出了该情况下激光脉冲在等离子体中自压缩后形成的高阶孤子分裂. 利用一维粒子数值模拟程序(particle-in-cell,PIC)也观察到了脉冲的压缩和分裂现象,得到了与数值计算一致的结果. 关键词： 非线性薛定谔方程 自压缩 脉冲分裂 粒子模拟