Observation of pulsed fast electron precipitations and the cyclotron generation mechanism of burst activity in a decaying ECR discharge plasma

We have detected and investigated quasi-periodic series of pulsed energetic electron precipitations in the decaying plasma of a pulsed ECR discharge in a mirror axisymmetric magnetic trap. The observed particle ejections from the trap are interpreted as the result of resonant interaction between energetic electrons and a slow extraordinary wave propagating in the rarefied plasma across the external magnetic field. We have been able to explain the generation mechanism of the sequences of pulsed precipitations at the nonlinear instability growth phase in terms of a cyclotron maser model in which the instability threshold is exceeded through a reduction in electromagnetic energy losses characteristic of the plasma decay.     

Gas dynamics and thermal-ionization instability of the cathode region of a glow discharge. Part II

The influence of the gas flow structure in the cathode sheath of a glow discharge on the discharge stability is studied numerically. The electric parameters are calculated in a diffusion-drift model that consistently takes into account associative dissociation as an additional electron source. The model also includes equations describing both the thermal mode of the cathode and the nonequilibrium physicochemical gas dynamics of a moderately rarefied gas. It is shown that, in a pulsed discharge, the increasing branch of the current-voltage characteristic, which is associated with the gas rarefaction behind the cathode shock wave, can change to a descending branch associated with the intensification of associative ionization. This gives rise to cathode sheath instability. The results of calculations agree well with experiments.     

Upstream ionization instability associated with a current-free double layer

A low frequency instability has been observed using various electrostatic probes in a low-pressure expanding helicon plasma. The instability is associated with the presence of a current-free double layer (DL). The frequency of the instability increases linearly with the potential drop of the DL, and simultaneous measurements show their coexistence. A theory for an upstream ionization instability has been developed, which shows that electrons accelerated through the DL increase the ionization upstream and are responsible for the observed instability. The theory is in good agreement with the experimental results.     

Formation of compression shocks in a nonequilibrium plasma flow in a magnetic field

Plasma flow in a linearly widening, ideally sectioned, short-circuited magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) channel is studied. MHD flows are classified into two types: continuous flows and flows with a compressional MHD shock in plasmas that are stable and unstable against the onset of ionization instability. Specific features in the evolution of a stationary compression MHD shock are investigated, and its position as a function of the Stewart number is determined. It is found that, in a plasma flow in which ionization instability develops, a compression MHD shock arises at lower values of the MHD interaction parameter than in a stable plasma flow. An unidentified type of instability of MHD discontinuities is revealed.     

Multi-dimensional instability of electrostatic solitary waves in ultra-relativistic degenerate electron-positron-ion plasmas

The basic features and multi-dimensional instability of electrostatic (EA) solitary waves propagating in an ultra-relativistic degenerate dense magnetized plasma (containing inertia-less electrons, inertia-less positrons, and inertial ions) have been theoretically investigated by reductive perturbation method and small-k perturbation expansion technique. The Zakharov-Kuznetsov (ZK) equation has been derived, and its numerical solutions for some special cases have been analyzed to identify the basic features (viz. amplitude, width, instability, etc.) of these electrostatic solitary structures. The implications of our results in some compact astrophysical objects, particularly white dwarfs and neutron stars, are briefly discussed.     

Electrostatic Instabilities at High Frequency in a Plasma Shock Front

New electrostatic instabilities in the plasma shock front are reported. These instabilities are driven by the electro- static field which is caused by charge separation and the parameter gradients in a plasma shock front. The linear analysis to the high frequency branch of electrostatic instabilities has been carried out and the dispersion relations are obtained numerically. There are unstable disturbing waves in both the parallel and perpendicular directions of shock propagation. The real frequencies of both unstable waves are similar to the electron electrostatic wave, and the unstable growth rate in the parallel direction is much greater than the one in the perpendicular direction. The dependence of growth rates on the electric field and parameter gradients is also presented.     

等离子体激励器在航空航天工程中的应用前景

文章基于等离子体的Joule加热、静电力、Hall效应以及Lorentz加速度等固有特性,对等离子体在航空航天领域（不包括电推进和飞行器再入热防护方面）中的应用进行总结及评估.等离子体激励器在亚声速流到高超声速流的整个空气动力学领域及稀薄流领域,得到了广泛的应用.真正引人瞩目的是,与所控制的流场相比,应用中所加入的电磁力或能量仅仅与其扰动水平相当.因此,有效的流动控制往往就限制在像流动分离、流体动力学不稳定性、动态失速和涡破碎等动力学分岔问题中.有效的控制应用通常是利用有黏-无黏流相互作用的放大效应、外部磁场或微波能量的加入等来增强其控制效果.最后文章根据这些评估,对未来学科前沿提出了几点基础创新研究方向的建议.      

Instability Caused by an Inhomogeneous Energy Density Distribution as a Possible Source of Electrostatic Broadband Noise

Plasma instability caused by an inhomogeneous energy density distribution is considered. It is shown that this instability can lead to the excitation of electrostatic ion-cyclotron and oblique ion-acoustic waves, generated in the presence of an inhomogeneous transverse electric field and a shear in the parallel drift velocity of the plasma particles. The considered physical mechanisms of the instability generation in plasma can serve as possible sources of broadband electrostatic turbulence in the auroral ionosphere.     

Electrostatic shocks excited by velocity modulation of an ion beam in a plasma

Nonlinear evolutions of electrostatic shocks excited by a velocity-modulated ion beam along a magnetized plasma column are investigated by computer simulation for a Q-machine experiment. In the case of a beam velocity modulation, the perturbations grow spatially with subsequent saturation due to an ion bunching of the beam. With an increase in modulation ratio an electrostatic shock is formed, accompanied with a steepening of the propagating front. In the case of a beam density-modulation, however, the initial density jump decays simply. The velocity modulation method is quite effective for an excitation of electrostatic shocks in the Q-machine plasma with finite Landau damping. The simulation results using velocity modulation are consistent with the experimental results.     

Self-similarity of electrostatic fluctuations in a linear magnetised plasma system

In this Letter the long-range time correlations present in the fluctuation data in presence of electrostatic instability in a magnetised dc discharge plasma is presented. The electrostatic instability is generated due to the effect of crossed electric and magnetic field (E×B flow) and has intermediate frequency ranging from 50 to 100 MHz. Hurst exponent, the self-similarity parameter is calculated with the help of different statistical methods suggested by many researchers to determine the long-range time correlation present in fluctuation dynamics in the plasma column. The fluctuation in the ion saturation current is measured by a Langmuir probe for the study and the measurement is done both radially and axially in the plasma system. Estimated results clearly expose the self-similar character of the fluctuations with self-similarity parameters having values from 0.65 to 0.90 through the presence of long-range time correlation.     

Threshold of ion cyclotron parametric instability in a multispecies plasma

Experimental and theoretical studies are presented of ion cyclotron parametric instability into two electrostatic ion cyclotron waves in a multispecies plasma. The instability threshold obtained experimentally is in reasonable agreement with that predicted theoretically.     

Interaction of a Plasma Beam with a Transverse Magnetic Barrier

The interaction of an energetic He plasma beam with a quasi step-like transverse magnetic barrier is reported. When the rate of flow of momentum in the incident beam is less than the pressure of the magnetic field, a collisionless electrostatic shock is observed to form in front of the barrier as a result of the drastic compression of the plasma. The initially cold plasma is substantially thermalized by the shock and the electron density is increased by a factor of four. In the opposite limit the plasma penetrates the barrier in a flute-like manner.     

Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in a plasma with negative ions

A dispersion relation for low-frequency electrostatic modes in a plasma with negative ions is derived for the case in which a velocity shear Kelvin-Helmholtz instability exists in the positive ion flow along the magnetic field. It is found that the negative ions have, generally, a destabilizing effect, as seen previously for ion-acoustic and electrostatic ion-cyclotron waves. The influence of the negative-ion-to-positive-ion mass mass ratio on the stability is also examined     

Interaction of a glow discharge with a rarefied hypersonic flow in a curvilinear channel

A two-dimensional simulation model is used to study the gasdynamic structure of a rarefied hypersonic flow of molecular nitrogen in a curvilinear channel in which the lower surface carries the cathode section of the discharge gap whereas the upper surface serves as the anode. The electrodynamic structure of the glow discharge (the distribution of concentrations of charged species, current density, and electric potential) is examined. It was demonstrated that the burning of a glow discharge in a rarefied hypersonic flow makes it possible to effectively modify the shock wave structure of the flow.     

Shock Structures in Charge Variable Dusty Plasmas with Effect of Strongly Coupled Dust Particles

A theoretical investigation has been carried out to study the effect of strong electrostatic interaction on the dust acoustic shock structures in strongly coupled dusty plasma with dust charge fluctuations.The fluid approach is employed,in which the strong electrostatic interaction is modeled by effective electrostatic temperature.A Burger-like equation,the coefficients of which are significantly modified by effects of strong coupling and dust charge Ructuation,is derived.It is shown that the combined effects of dust charge Ructuation,the ion/electron temperature,the ion/electron population,and strong coupling effect modify the basic properties of the dust acoustic waves in such a strongly coupled dusty plasma.The results of this work are compared with those observed by some laboratory experiments.     

Laboratory Simulation of the Dynamics of a Dense Plasma Cloud Expanding in a Magnetized Background Plasma on a Krot Large-Scale Device

The first experimental results on the dynamics of a plasma cloud produced by a miniature coaxial gun in a magnetized background plasma have been reported. The record dimension of the plasma in the Krot device, which is more than 1 m across a magnetic field, has allowed the first implementation of the regime of “unbounded” background plasma, which is optimal for the simulation of astro- and geophysical phenomena. In the sub-Alfvénic regime of cloud expansion, a set of characteristic effects has been demonstrated, including the formation of a diamagnetic cavity, deceleration of ions of the cloud by the background plasma, and development of high-frequency instability at the edge of the cloud.     

On the transverse dispersion of a relativistic electron beam in the evolution of ion hose instability in the ion focusing regime

We investigate the transverse expansion of a relativistic electron beam propagating in a rarefied gas-plasma medium in the ion focusing regime during the development of ion hose instability. The expression is constructed for the pinch potential of the beam as a function of the amplitude of transverse deviation of the beam and on the parameter characterizing the ratio of the characteristic radial scales of the ion channel and of the electron beam. It is shown that this potential becomes substantially lower upon an increase in the hose oscillation amplitude and when the ion channel expands relative to the transverse size of the beam cross section.     

Analytical studies on the evolution processes of rarefied deuterium plasma shell Z-pinch by PIC and MHD simulations

In this paper, we analytically explore the magnetic field and mass density evolutions obtained in particle-in-cell(PIC)and magnetohydrodynamics(MHD) simulations of a rarefied deuterium shell Z-pinch and compare those results, and also we study the effects of artificially increased Spitzer resistivity on the magnetic field evolution and Z-pinch dynamic process in the MHD simulation. There are significant differences between the profiles of mass density in the PIC and MHD simulations before 45 ns of the Z-pinch in this study. However, after the shock formation in the PIC simulation,the mass density profile is similar to that in the MHD simulation in the case of using multiplier 2 to modify the Spitzer resistivity. Compared with the magnetic field profiles of the PIC simulation of the shell, the magnetic field diffusion has still not been sufficiently revealed in the MHD simulation even though their convergence ratios become the same by using larger multipliers in the resistivity. The MHD simulation results suggest that the magnetic field diffusion is greatly enhanced by increasing the Spitzer resistivity used, which, however, causes the implosion characteristic to change from shock compression to weak shock, even shockless evolution, and expedites the expansion of the shell. Too large a multiplier is not suggested to be used to modify the resistivity in some Z-pinch applications, such as the Z-pinch driven inertial confinement fusion(ICF) in a dynamic hohlraum. Two-fluid or Hall MHD model, even the PIC/fluid hybrid simulation would be considered as a suitable physical model when there exist the plasma regions with very low density in the simulated domain.     

Absolute parametric instability of low-frequency waves in a 2D nonuniform anisotropic warm plasma

Using the separation method, absolute parametric instability (API) of electrostatic waves in a magnetized pumped warm plasma is investigated. In this case the effect of static strong magnetic field is considered. The problem of strong magnetic field is solved in two-dimensional (2D) nonuniform plane plasma. Equations which describe the spatial part of the electric potential are obtained. Also, the growth rates and conditions of the parametric instability for periodic and aperiodic cases are obtained. It is found that the spatial nonuniformity of the plasma exerts a stabilizing effect on the API. It is shown that the growth rates of periodic and aperiodic API in warm plasma are less when compared to that in cold plasma.     

Analysis of the Evolution of a Supersonically Expanding Plasma

A supersonically expanding arc plasma in argon is analyzed both experimentally and theoretically. The plasma is created in a cascaded arc and extracted through a hole in the anode. It emanates in a large vacuum system, where it expands supersonically. This expansion is limited by a shock wave. After the shock wave a subsonic plasma beam is created. A quasi one-dimensional model, based on the conservation of mass, momentum and energy is presented. The shock wave is treated as a discontinuity. The electron density, the gas velocity and the gas temperature are measured as a function of the position in the expansion by means of Stark broadening and Doppler spectroscopy. The model calculations agree well with the measurements, especially in the first part of the supersonic flow.