Electron heat transport measured in a stochastic magnetic field

New profile measurements have allowed the electron thermal diffusivity profile to be estimated from power balance in the Madison Symmetric Torus where magnetic islands overlap and field lines are stochastic. The measurements show that (1) the electron energy transport is conductive not convective, (2) the measured thermal diffusivities are in good agreement with numerical simulations of stochastic transport, and (3) transport is greatly reduced near the reversal surface where magnetic diffusion is small.     

Observation of velocity-independent electron transport in the reversed field pinch

Confinement of runaway electrons has been observed for the first time in a reversed field pinch during improved-confinement plasmas in the Madison Symmetric Torus. Energy-resolved hard-x-ray flux measurements have been used to determine the velocity dependence of the electron diffusion coefficient, utilizing computational solutions of the Fokker-Planck transport equation. With improved-confinement, the fast electron diffusivity drops by 2 orders of magnitude and is independent of velocity. This suggests a change in the transport mechanism away from stochastic magnetic field diffusion.     

Mode locking in reversed-field pinch experiments

The MHD mode trajectory in the Madison Symmetric Torus reversed-field pinch has been found to obey the sine-Gordon equation. Corresponding to experiment, a perturbation analysis predicts the locations of mode locking to be at the vacuum chamber poloidal and/or toroidal gaps. The mode's energy dissipates when it locks, as shown by a decaying spiral phase-plane trajectory. Unlocked modes travel around the torus without an abrupt energy loss. By varying key machine parameters obtained by statistical analysis, the probability of locking in accordance with the experimental results can be predicted.     

Observation of weak impact of a stochastic magnetic field on fast-ion confinement

Fast ions are observed to be very well confined in the Madison Symmetric Torus reversed field pinch despite the presence of stochastic magnetic field. The fast-ion energy loss is consistent with the classical slowing down rate, and their confinement time is longer than expected by stochastic estimates. Fast-ion confinement is measured from the decay of d-d neutrons following a short pulse of a 20 keV atomic deuterium beam. Ion confinement agrees with computation of particle trajectories in the stochastic magnetic field, and is understood through consideration of ion guiding center islands.     

Spatially resolved measurements of ion heating during impulsive reconnection in the Madison Symmetric Torus

The impurity ion temperature evolution has been measured during three types of impulsive reconnection events in the Madison Symmetric Torus reversed field pinch. During an edge reconnection event, the drop in stored magnetic energy is small and ion heating is observed to be limited to the outer half of the plasma. Conversely, during a global reconnection event the drop in stored magnetic energy is large, and significant heating is observed at all radii. For both kinds of events, the drop in magnetic energy is sufficient to explain the increase in ion thermal energy. However, not all types of reconnection lead to ion heating. During a core reconnection event, both the stored magnetic energy and impurity ion temperature remain constant. The results suggest that a drop in magnetic energy is required for ions to be heated during reconnection, and that when this occurs heating is localized near the reconnection layer.     

Collisional damping of ETG-mode-driven zonal flows

We study collisional damping of electron zonal flows in toroidal electron temperature gradient (ETG) turbulence due to the friction between trapped and untrapped electrons. With the assumption of adiabatic ions, the collisional damping is shown to occur on fast time scales approximately 0.24epsilon(1/2)tau(e). The comparison with the growth rate of electron zonal flows indicates that the shearing by electron zonal flows is unlikely to be a robust mechanism for regulating ETG turbulence. This finding vitiates the claims of several simulation studies that have ignored the effects of collisional damping of electron zonal flows and offers a possible partial explanation of the high levels of electron thermal transport observed in the National Spherical Torus Experiment.     

Monitoring Alfvén cascades with interferometry on the JET Tokamak

A microwave interferometry technique is applied for the first time for detecting a discrete spectrum of Alfvén cascade (AC) eigenmodes excited with fast ions in reversed magnetic shear plasmas of the Joint European Torus. The interferometry measurements of plasma density perturbations associated with ACs show an unprecedented frequency and time resolution superior to that obtained with external magnetic coils. The measurements of ACs are used for monitoring the evolution of the safety factor and density of rational magnetic surfaces in the region of maximum plasma current.     

Confinement time exceeding one second for a toroidal electron plasma

Nearly steady-state electron plasmas are trapped in a toroidal magnetic field for the first time. We report the first results from a new toroidal electron plasma experiment, the Lawrence Non-neutral Torus II, in which electron densities on the order of 10(7) cm(-3) are trapped in a 270-degree toroidal arc (670 G toroidal magnetic field) by application of trapping potentials to segments of a conducting shell. The total charge inferred from measurements of the frequency of the m=1 diocotron mode is observed to decay on a 3 s time scale, a time scale that approaches the predicted limit due to magnetic pumping transport. Three seconds represents approximately equal to 10(5) periods of the lowest frequency plasma mode, indicating that nearly steady-state conditions are achieved.     

Electromagnetic transport from microtearing mode turbulence

This Letter presents nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of microtearing mode turbulence. The simulations include collisional and electromagnetic effects and use experimental parameters from a high-β discharge in the National Spherical Torus Experiment. The predicted electron thermal transport is comparable to that given by experimental analysis, and it is dominated by the electromagnetic contribution of electrons free-streaming along the resulting stochastic magnetic field line trajectories. Experimental values of flow shear can significantly reduce the predicted transport.     

Measurements of electron thermal transport due to electron temperature gradient modes in a basic experiment

Production and identification of electron temperature gradient modes have already been reported [X. Wei, V. Sokolov, and A.?K. Sen, Phys. Plasmas 17, 042108 (2010)]. Now a measurement of electron thermal conductivity via a unique high frequency triple probe yielded a value of χ(⊥e) ranging between 2 and 10 m(2)/s, which is of the order of a several gyrobohm diffusion coefficient. This experimental result appears to agree with a value of nonlocal thermal conductivity obtained from a rough theoretical estimation and not inconsistent with gyrokinetic simulation results for tokamaks. The first experimental scaling of the thermal conductivity versus the amplitude of the electron temperature gradient fluctuation is also obtained. It is approximately linear, indicating a strong turbulence signature.     

Suppression of electron temperature gradient turbulence via negative magnetic shear in NSTX

Negative magnetic shear is found to suppress electron turbulence and improve electron thermal transport for plasmas in the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX). Sufficiently negative magnetic shear results in a transition out of a stiff profile regime. Density fluctuation measurements from high-k microwave scattering are verified to be the electron temperature gradient (ETG) mode by matching measured rest frequency and linear growth rate to gyrokinetic calculations. Fluctuation suppression under negligible E×B shear conditions confirm that negative magnetic shear alone is sufficient for ETG suppression. Measured electron temperature gradients can significantly exceed ETG critical gradients with ETG mode activity reduced to intermittent bursts, while electron thermal diffusivity improves to below 0.1?electron gyro-Bohms.     

Influence of experimental resolution on the quantum-to-classical transition in the quartic oscillator

The quantum-classical transition problem is investigated for the quartic oscillator coupled to a thermal reservoir. We show for this model that the combination of relevant diffusion, classical action (represented by the amplitude of an initial coherent state) and the experimental uncertainties is necessary to achieve the classical regime. In order to study the role of limited resolutions of measurement apparatuses on the correspondence between the quantum and classical dynamics, we consider experimental errors due the preparation of the initial state of the quartic oscillator and the inaccuracies in the time measurements. A quantum break time depending on the diffusion constant, the amplitude of the initial coherent state and the inaccuracy of measurements is defined. We found, for this model, a regime where the increasing of diffusion does not anticipate classicality. In such regime, there is a minimum value for the classical action associated to classical behavior of the system.     

A closer look into DESIRE for NMR microscopy

The major challenge of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) microscopy at a spatial resolution of a few micrometers is to obtain a sufficiently high signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) within a reasonable measurement time. As a particular difficulty, molecular self-diffusion poses a serious limitation to true spatial resolution and SNR if conventional Fourier encoding techniques are used. Opposed to that, the alternative DESIRE (Diffusion Enhancement of SIgnal and REsolution) approach to NMR microscopy utilises diffusion to increase the SNR. Being a real-space imaging method, spatial localisation is accomplished by saturation pulses while diffusion continuously replaces the saturated by unsaturated spins. For this technique a signal enhancement of up to three orders of magnitude has been predicted and initial experimental data have provided a proof of principle. In the present work, a detailed investigation of one-dimensional (1D) DESIRE is presented including simulations of a real implementation of the method, a quantitative experimental analysis, and basic 1D imaging. The simulations reveal the importance and provide the means of ensuring the true spatial resolution for this particular way of localisation, enable the selection of useful experimental parameters, and predict the specific image contrast to be expected around barriers restricting diffusion. Experimental data are presented with resolutions down to 3 microm and DESIRE enhancement up to 25 that are in good agreement with the simulation results. In particular, 1D DESIRE imaging in a phantom confirms the expected signal drop close to barriers due to spatially restricted diffusion.     

Anomalous diffusion and lévy flights in a two-dimensional time periodic flow

One of the main consequences of chaos is that transport is enhanced with respect to the fluid at rest, where only molecular diffusion is present. Considering long times and spatial scales much larger than the length scale of the velocity field, particles typically diffuse with a diffusion constant, usually much bigger than the molecular one. Nevertheless there are some important physical systems in which the particle motion is not a normal diffusive process: in such a case one speaks of anomalous diffusion. In this paper, anomalous diffusion is experimentally studied in an oscillating two-dimensional vortex system. In particular, scalar enhanced diffusion due to the synchronization between different characteristic frequencies of the investigated flow (i.e., resonance) is investigated. The flow has been generated by applying an electromagnetic forcing on a thin layer of an electrolyte solution and measurements are made through image analysis. In particular, by using the Feature Tracking (FT) technique, we are able to obtain a large amount of Lagrangian data (i.e., the seeding density can be very high and trajectories can be followed for large time intervals) and transport can be characterized by analyzing the growth of the variance of particle displacements versus time and the dependence of the diffusion coefficient on the flow characteristic frequencies.     

Diffusion of positive mouns in copper detected by zero-field μSR

Using the Zero-Field μSR method coupled with the unique pulsed muon beam, new systematic measurements of diffusion (hopping) rate of positive muon were performed for the two ultra-pure copper samples (residual resistivity ratio = 18,000 and 7,350) and for the copper doped with 95 ppm iron. For these measurements a new detection system with an improved time resolution was installed to reduce the distortion of μ-e decay time spectrum due to the counting loss of positrons. A preliminary result suggests that the leveling-off of the hopping rate below 0.5 K is not affected by the purity for the ultra-pure sample, while it is strongly modified for the doped copper.     

Observation of χ(c1) decays into vector meson pairs φφ, ωω, and ωφ

Using (106±4)×10?? ψ(3686) events accumulated with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII e?e? collider, we present the first measurement of decays of χ(c1) to vector meson pairs φφ, ωω, and ωφ. The branching fractions are measured to be (4.4±0.3±0.5)×10??, (6.0±0.3±0.7)×10??, and (2.2±0.6±0.2)×10??, for χ(c1)→φφ, ωω, and ωφ, respectively, which indicates that the hadron helicity selection rule is significantly violated in χ(cJ) decays. In addition, the measurement of χ(cJ)→ωφ provides the first indication of the rate of doubly OZI-suppressed χ(cJ) decay. Finally, we present improved measurements for the branching fractions of χ(c0) and χ(c2) to vector meson pairs.     

High-resolution nonlinear laser spectroscopy of exciton relaxation in GaAs quantum wells

This paper describes measurements of exciton relaxation in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well structures based on high resolution nonlinear laser spectroscopy. The nonlinear optical measurements show that low energy excitons can be localized by monolayer disorder of the quantum well interface. We show that these excitons migrate between localization sites by phonon assisted migration, leading to spectral diffusion of the excitons. The frequency domain measurements give a direct measure of the quasi-equilibrium exciton spectral redistribution due to exciton energy relaxation, and the temperature dependence of the measured migration rates confirms recent theoretical predictions. The observed line shapes are interpreted based on solutions we obtain to modified Bloch equations which include the effects of spectral diffusion.     

AC hot wire measurement of thermophysical properties of nanofluids with 3ω method

We present a new application of a hot wire sensor for simultaneous and independent measurement of thermal conductivity k and diffusivity α of (nano)fluids, based on a hot wire thermal probe with ac excitation and 3 ω lock-in detection. The theoretical modeling of imaginary part of the signal yields the k value while the phase yields the α value. Due to modulated heat flow in cylindrical geometry with a radius comparable to the thermal diffusion length, the necessary sample quantity is kept very low, typically 25μl. In the case of relative measurements, the resolution is 0.1% in k and 0.3% in α. Measurements of water-based Aerosil 200V nanofluids indicate that ultrasound treatment is more efficient than high pressure dispersion method in enhancing their thermal parameters.     

Diffusion Measurement in Phantoms and Tissues Using SLIM Localization

A new approach to efficient localized diffusion measurements has been developed and evaluated on phantoms and isolated tissues. The combination of a diffusion-sensitive pulse sequence with SLIM (spectral localization by imaging) makes efficient and accurate localized water and metabolite diffusion measurements possible with a substantial improvement in spatial or time resolution compared to standard methods. Phantom experiments showed that diffusion of substances present in relatively low concentration within small compartments can be measured accurately by this method, suggesting potential applications for diffusion measurements of metabolitesin vivo.Experiments on excised rat uterine horns demonstrated the ability of this method to measure localized diffusion of water within irregularly shaped regions of biological samples. Accurate diffusion measurements were achieved in the localized regions with acquisition times less than would have been required by standard diffusion imaging methods.     

用扫描热显微镜测量微小区域热导性质的探讨

随着高新技术的迅速发展,许多研究对象已进入亚微米和纳米范畴。在对这些对象的热性能和热可靠性的研究中,亚微米尺度的热物性测量已成为关键技术之一。例如：在微电子、微电子机械系统（MEMS）领域中,已使用纳米量级厚度的材质和做出纳米尺度线宽的器件。在材料科学、生物学、医学和化学等许多领域,高空间分辨率下的热物性测量也具有重要意义。本文经过实验;初步用扫描热显微镜判定了微小区域材料热导性质的差别,并从理论上探讨了用该仪器测量微小区域热导性质的方法原理。