ALBERT

Description: Heating of collisionless plasmas in closed adiabatic magnetic cycle comprising of a quasi static compression followed by a non quasi static constrained expansion against a constant external pressure is proposed. Thermodynamic constraints are derived to show that the plasma always gains heat in cycles having at least one non quasi static process. The turbulent relaxation of the plasma to the equilibrium state at the end of the non quasi static expansion is discussed and verified via 1D Particle in Cell (PIC) simulations. Applications of this scheme to heating plasmas in open configurations (mirror machines) and closed configurations (tokamak, reverse field pinche) are discussed.

Description: Interactions of two Li plasma plumes and shock waves are investigated at various pressures (∼10 −5 to 3 mbar) in the argon gas ambient. Fast imaging and optical emission spectroscopy are used to study the plume dynamics and characteristic emission of plasmas. The plasma plumes are created in laser-blow-off geometry. The expansion of plasma plumes in the ambient gas leads to the formation of an interaction zone. The formation of interaction zone is dependent on the ambient pressure and below a certain pressure, no significant change is observed in the shape and size of the interaction plasma. In the higher pressure, formation of interaction zone and its shape are dependent on ambient pressure. Dynamics of seed plasmas and interaction zone are also affected by the shock-shock interactions. The shock-shock interaction depends on the angle of incidence (α) between two shock waves at the initial time of interaction but as the plumes expand, the shock-shock interaction does not follow α dependence.

Description: The propagation of large amplitude ion-acoustic solitons is studied in the laboratory frame ( x , t ) using a 1-D particle-in-cell code that evolves the ion dynamics by treating them as particles but assumes the electrons to follow the usual Boltzmann distribution. It is observed that for very low Mach numbers the simulation results closely match the Korteweg-de Vries soliton solutions, obtained in the wave frame, and which propagate without distortion. The collision of two such profiles is observed to exhibit the usual solitonic behaviour. As the Mach number is increased, the given profile initially evolves and then settles down to the exact solution of the full non-linear Poisson equation, which then subsequently propagates without distortion. The fractional change in amplitude is found to increase linearly with Mach number. It is further observed that initial profiles satisfying k 2 λ d e 2 〈 1 break up into a series of solitons.

Description: Excitation of wakefield in a cold homogeneous plasma, driven by an ultra-relativistic electron beam is studied in one dimension using fluid simulation techniques. For a homogeneous rigid beam having density ( n b ) less than or equal to half the plasma density ( n 0 ), simulation results are found to be in good agreement with the analytical work of Rosenzweig [Phys. Rev. Lett. 58 , 555 (1987)]. Here, Rosenzweig's work has been analytically extended to regimes where the ratio of beam density to plasma density is greater than half and results have been verified using simulation. Further in contrast to Rosenzweig's work, if the beam is allowed to evolve in a self-consistent manner, several interesting features are observed in simulation viz. splitting of the beam into beam-lets (for l b  〉  λ p ) and compression of the beam (for l b  

Description: The effects of radiation reaction force on laser driven auto-resonant particle acceleration scheme are studied using Landau-Lifshitz equation of motion. These studies are carried out for both linear and circularly polarized laser fields in the presence of static axial magnetic field. From the parametric study, a radiation reaction dominated region has been identified in which the particle dynamics is greatly effected by this force. In the radiation reaction dominated region, the two significant effects on particle dynamics are seen, viz., (1) saturation in energy gain by the initially resonant particle and (2) net energy gain by an initially non-resonant particle which is caused due to resonance broadening. It has been further shown that with the relaxation of resonance condition and with optimum choice of parameters, this scheme may become competitive with the other present-day laser driven particle acceleration schemes. The quantum corrections to the Landau-Lifshitz equation of motion have also been taken into account. The difference in the energy gain estimates of the particle by the quantum corrected and classical Landau-Lifshitz equation is found to be insignificant for the present day as well as upcoming laser facilities.

Description: We report a systematic investigation of two plume interactions at different spatial separation (3-7 mm) in laser-blow-off. The plasmas plumes are created using Laser-blow-off (LBO) scheme of a thin film. The fast imaging technique is used to record the evolution of seed plasmas and the interaction zone which is formed as a result of interaction of the two seed plasmas. Time resolved optical emission spectroscopy is used to study evolution of optical emissions of the species present in the different regions of the plasmas. Neutral Li emissions (Li I 670.8 nm (2s 2 S 1/2 ← 2p 2 P 3/2, 1/2 ) and Li I 610.3 nm (2p 2 P 3/2, 1/2 ← 3d 2 D 3/2, 5/2 )) are dominant in the plasmas but significant differences are observed in the emission and estimated plasma parameters of the seed and the interaction zone. The transport of plasma species from the seed plasmas to the interaction zone is discussed in the terms of plume divergence, kinetic energy of particles, and ion acoustic speed. An attempt is made to understand the formation and dynamics of the interaction zone in the colliding LBO seed plasmas.

Description: Phase mixing of a longitudinal Akhiezer-Polovin wave subjected to a small amplitude longitudinal perturbation and its eventual breaking is studied analytically. It is well known that longitudinal Akhiezer-Polovin wave subjected to arbitrarily small longitudinal perturbation breaks via the process of phase mixing at an amplitude well below its limiting amplitude [Verma et al ., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108 , 125005 (2012)]. We analytically show that the phase mixing time (breaking time, ω p τ mix ) scales with β (phase velocity) and u m (maximum fluid velocity) as ω p τ m i x ∼ 2 π β 3 δ [ 1 / u m 2 − 1 / 4 ] , where δ is the amplitude of velocity perturbation and ω p is the non-relativistic plasma frequency. This analytical dependence of phase mixing time on β , u m , and δ is further verified using numerical simulations based on Dawson sheet model.

Description: Space-time evolution of a relativistic electron beam driven wake-field in a cold, homogeneous plasma is studied using 1D-fluid simulation techniques. It is observed that the wake wave gradually evolves and eventually breaks, exhibiting sharp spikes in the density profile and sawtooth like features in the electric field profile [Bera et al ., Phys. Plasmas 22 , 073109 (2015)]. It is shown here that the excited wakefield is a longitudinal Akhiezer-Polovin mode [A. I. Akhiezer and R. V. Polovin, Sov. Phys. JETP 3 , 696 (1956)] and its steepening (breaking) can be understood in terms of phase mixing of this mode, which arises because of relativistic mass variation effects. Further, the phase mixing time (breaking time) is studied as a function of beam density and beam velocity and is found to follow the well known scaling presented by Mukherjee and Sengupta [Phys. Plasmas 21 , 112104 (2014)].

Description: Spatio-temporal evolution of the relativistic Buneman instability has been investigated in one dimension using an in-house developed particle-in-cell simulation code. Starting from the excitation of the instability, its evolution has been followed numerically till its quenching and beyond. The simulation results have been quantitatively compared with the fluid theory and are found to be in conformity with the well known fact that the maximum growth rate ( γ max ) reduces due to relativistic effects and varies with γ e 0 and m/M as γ m a x ∼ 3 2 γ e 0 ( m 2 M ) 1 / 3 , where γ e 0 is the Lorentz factor associated with the initial electron drift velocity ( v 0 ) and (m/M) is the electron to ion mass ratio. Further it is observed that in contrast to the non-relativistic results [A. Hirose, Plasma Phys. 20 , 481 (1978)] at the saturation point, the ratio of electrostatic field energy density ( ∑ k | E k | 2 / 8 π ) to initial drift kinetic energy density ( W 0 ) scales with γ e 0 as ∼ 1 / γ e 0 2 . This novel result on the scaling of energy densities has been found to be in quantitative agreement with the scalings derived using fluid theory.

Description: This paper is a simulation based investigation of the effect of elastic collisions and effectively elastic-like excitation collisions between electrons and background neutrals on the dynamics of a cylindrically trapped electron cloud that also has an ion contaminant mixed in it. A cross section of the trapped non neutral cloud composed of electrons mixed uniformly with a fractional population of ions is loaded on a 2D PIC grid with the plasma in a state of unstable equilibrium due to differential rotation between the electron and the ion component. The electrons are also loaded with an axial velocity component, v z , that mimics their bouncing motion between the electrostatic end plugs of a Penning-Malmberg trap. This v z loading facilitates 3D elastic and excitation collisions of the electrons with background neutrals under a MCC scheme. In the present set of numerical experiments, the electrons do not ionize the neutrals. This helps in separating out only the effect of non-ionizing collisions of electrons on the dynamics of the cloud. Simulations reveal that these non-ionizing collisions indirectly influence the ensuing collisionless ion resonance instability of the contaminated electron cloud by a feedback process. The collisional relaxation reduces the average density of the electron cloud and thereby increases the fractional density of the ions mixed in it. The dynamically changing electron density and fractional density of ions feed back on the ongoing ion-resonance (two-stream) instability between the two components of the nonneutral cloud and produce deviations in the paths of progression of the instability that are uncorrelated at different background gas pressures. Effects of the collisions on the instability are evident from alteration in the growth rate and energetics of the instability caused by the presence of background neutrals as compared to a vacuum background. Further in order to understand if the non-ionizing collisions can independently be a cause of destabilization of an electron cloud, a second set of numerical experiments were performed with pure electron plasmas making non-ionizing collisions with different densities of background neutrals. These experiments reveal that the nature of potential energy extraction from the electron cloud by the non-ionizing collisions is not similar to the potential energy extraction of other destabilizing processes, e.g., a resistive wall instability. This difference in the energy extraction process renders these non-ionizing collisions incapable of independently triggering an instability of the cloud.