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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 1,063 records · Page 59
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2015

Thermal equilibrium of non-neutral plasma in dipole magnetic field

Self-organization of a long-lived structure is one of the remarkable characteristics of macroscopic systems governed by long-range interactions. In a homogeneous magnetic field, a non-neutral plasma creates a “thermal equilibrium,” which is a Boltzmann distribution on a rigidly rotating frame. Here, we study how a non-neutral plasma self-organizes in inhomogeneous magnetic field; as a typical system, we consider a dipole magnetic field. In this generalized setting, the plasma exhibits its fundamental mechanism that determines the relaxed state. The scale hierarchy of adiabatic invariants is the determinant; the Boltzmann distribution under the topological constraint by the robust adiabatic invariants (hence, the homogeneous distribution with respect to the fragile invariant) is the relevant relaxed state, which turns out to be a rigidly rotating clump of particles (just same as in a homogeneous magnetic field), while the density is no longer homogeneous.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Loading relativistic Maxwell distributions in particle simulations

Numerical algorithms to load relativistic Maxwell distributions in particle-in-cell (PIC) and Monte-Carlo simulations are presented. For stationary relativistic Maxwellian, the inverse transform method and the Sobol algorithm are reviewed. To boost particles to obtain relativistic shifted-Maxwellian, two rejection methods are proposed in a physically transparent manner. Their acceptance efficiencies are ≈50% for generic cases and 100% for symmetric distributions. They can be combined with arbitrary base algorithms.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Dust charging and charge fluctuations in a weakly collisional radio-frequency sheath at low pressure

Models for the charging of dust particles in the bulk plasma and in the sheath region are discussed. A new model is proposed that describes collision-enhanced ion currents in the sheath. The collisions result in a substantial reduction of the negative charge of the dust. Experimental data for the dust charge in the sheath can be described by this model when a Bi-Maxwellian electron distribution is taken into account. Expressions for the dust charging rate for all considered models are presented and their influence on the rise of the kinetic dust temperature is discussed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Radio frequency sheaths in an oblique magnetic field

The physics of radio-frequency (rf) sheaths near a conducting surface is studied for plasmas immersed in a magnetic field that makes an oblique angle θ with the surface. A set of one-dimensional equations is developed that describes the dynamics of the time-dependent magnetic presheath and non-neutral Debye sheath. The model employs Maxwell-Boltzmann electrons, and the magnetization and mobility of the ions is determined by the magnetic field strength, and wave frequency, respectively. The angle θ, assumed to be large enough to insure an electron-poor sheath, is otherwise arbitrary. Concentrating on the ion-cyclotron range of frequencies, the equations are solved numerically to obtain the rectified (dc) voltage, the rf voltage across the sheath, and the rf current flowing through the sheath. As an application of this model, the sheath voltage-current relation is used to obtain the rf sheath impedance, which in turn gives an rf sheath boundary condition for the electric field at the sheath-plasma interface that can be used in rf wave codes. In general, the impedance has both resistive and capacitive contributions, and generalizes previous sheath boundary condition models. The resistive part contributes to parasitic power dissipation at the wall.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Slowly moving test charge in two-electron component non-Maxwellian plasma

Potential distributions around a slowly moving test charge are calculated by taking into account the electron-acoustic waves in an unmagnetized plasma. Considering a neutralizing background of static positive ions, the supra-thermal hot and cold electrons are described by the Vlasov equations to account for the Kappa (power-law in velocity space) and Maxwell equilibrium distributions. Fourier analysis further leads to the derivation of electrostatic potential showing the impact of supra-thermal hot electrons. The test charge moves slowly in comparison with the hot and cold electron thermal speeds and is therefore shielded by the electrons. This gives rise to a short-range Debye-Hückel potential decaying exponentially with distance and to a far field potential decaying as inverse third power of the distance from the test charge. The results are relevant for both laboratory and space plasmas, where supra-thermal hot electrons with power-law distributions have been observed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Effect of excess superthermal hot electrons on finite amplitude ion-acoustic solitons and supersolitons in a magnetized auroral plasma

The effect of excess superthermal electrons is investigated on finite amplitude nonlinear ion-acoustic waves in a magnetized auroral plasma. The plasma model consists of a cold ion fluid, Boltzmann distribution of cool electrons, and kappa distributed hot electron species. The model predicts the evolution of negative potential solitons and supersolitons at subsonic Mach numbers region, whereas, in the case of Cairn's nonthermal distribution model for the hot electron species studied earlier, they can exist both in the subsonic and supersonic Mach number regimes. For the dayside auroral parameters, the model generates the super-acoustic electric field amplitude, speed, width, and pulse duration of about 18 mV/m, 25.4 km/s, 663 m, and 26 ms, respectively, which is in the range of the Viking spacecraft measurements.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Study of self-consistent particle flows in a plasma blob with particle-in-cell simulations

The self-consistent particle flows in a filamentary coherent structure along the magnetic field line in scrape-off layer (SOL) plasma (plasma blob) have been investigated by means of a three-dimensional electrostatic particle-in-cell simulation code. The presence of the spiral current system composed of the diamagnetic and parallel currents in a blob is confirmed by the particle simulation without any assumed sheath boundary models. Furthermore, the observation of the electron and ion parallel velocity distributions in a blob shows that those distributions are far from Maxwellian due to modification with the sheath formation and that the electron temperature on the higher potential side in a blob is higher than that on the lower potential side. Also, it is found that the ions on the higher potential side are accelerated more intensively along the magnetic field line than those on the lower potential side near the edge. This study indicates that particle simulations are able to provide an exact current closure to analysis of blob dynamics and will bring more accurate prediction of plasma transport in the SOL without any empirical assumptions.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Sheath energy transmission in a collisional plasma with collisionless sheath

Sheath energy transmission governs the plasma energy exhaust onto a material surface. The ion channel is dominated by convection, but the electron channel has a significant thermal conduction component, which is dominated by the Knudsen layer effect in the presence of an absorbing wall. First-principle kinetic simulations also reveal a robustly supersonic sheath entry flow. The ion sheath energy transmission and the sheath potential are accurately predicted by a sheath model of truncated bi-Maxwellian electron distribution. The electron energy transmission is further enhanced by a parallel heat flux of the perpendicular degrees of freedom.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Geodesic mode instability driven by electron and ion fluxes in tokamaks

The effect of the parallel electron current and plasma flux on Geodesic Acoustic Modes (GAM) in a tokamak is analyzed by kinetic theory taking into the account the ion Landau damping and diamagnetic drifts. It is shown that the electron current and plasma flow, modeled by shifted Maxwell distributions of electrons and ions, may overcome the ion Landau damping generating the GAM instability when the parallel electron current velocity is larger than the effective parallel GAM phase velocity of sidebands, Rqω. The instability is driven by the electron current and the parallel ion flux cross term. Possible applications to tokamak experiments are discussed. The existence of the geodesic ion sound mode due to plasma flow is shown.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Non-commutative Nash inequalities

A set of functional inequalities—called Nash inequalities—are introduced and analyzed in the context of quantum Markov process mixing. The basic theory of Nash inequalities is extended to the setting of non-commutative L{sub p} spaces, where their relationship to Poincaré and log-Sobolev inequalities is fleshed out. We prove Nash inequalities for a number of unital reversible semigroups.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

Nonlinear vortex structures with perpendicular shear flow, hot ions, and nonthermal distribution of electrons

Coupling of drift vortex and the ion acoustic modes in the linear and nonlinear regimes are investigated with sheared ion flow perpendicular to the ambient magnetic field in a plasma comprising of hot ions and nonthermal population of electrons. In this regard, generation of nonlinear vortex structures in the presence of kappa, Cairns, and q-nonextensive electron distributions are investigated in detail, and comparison with the Maxwellian distribution is also made. The appositeness of the present investigation in the matter of auroral F-region is also pointed out.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Stability of the Tonks–Langmuir discharge pre-sheath

The article formulates the stability problem of the plasma sheath in the Tonks–Langmuir discharge. Using the kinetic description of the ion gas, i.e., the stability of the potential shape in the quasi-neutral pre-sheath regarding the high and low frequency, the perturbations are investigated. The electrons are assumed to be Maxwell–Boltzmann distributed. Regarding high-frequency perturbations, the pre-sheath is shown to be stable. The stability problem regarding low-frequency perturbations can be reduced to an analysis of the “diffusion like” equation, which results in the instability of the potential distribution in the pre-sheath. By means of the Particle in Cell simulations, also the nonlinear stage of low frequency oscillations is investigated. Comparing the figure obtained with the figure for linear stage, one can find obvious similarity in the spatial-temporal behavior of the potential.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2019

Mean force kinetic theory: A convergent kinetic theory for weakly and strongly coupled plasmas

A new closure of the BBGKY hierarchy is developed, which results in a convergent kinetic equation that provides a rigorous extension of plasma kinetic theory into the regime of strong Coulomb coupling. The approach is based on a single expansion parameter which enforces that the exact equilibrium limit is maintained at all orders. Because the expansion parameter does not explicitly depend on the range or the strength of the interaction potential, the resulting kinetic theory does not suffer from the typical divergences at short and long length scales encountered when applying the standard kinetic equations to Coulomb interactions. Here, the approach demonstrates that particles effectively interact via the potential of mean force and that the range of this force determines the size of the collision volume. When applied to a plasma, the collision operator is shown to be related to the effective potential theory [S. D. Baalrud and J. Daligault, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 235001 (2013)]. In addition to the collision operator, this systematic derivation reveals a second term that is related to the excess (nonideal) components of the pressure and internal energy in the hydrodynamic limit. The relationship between this and previous kinetic theories is discussed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2019

Structure and phase behavior of polymer-linked colloidal gels

Low-density “equilibrium” gels that consist of a percolated, kinetically arrested network of colloidal particles and are resilient to aging can be fabricated by restricting the number of effective bonds that form between the colloids. Valence-restricted patchy particles have long served as one archetypal example of such materials, but equilibrium gels can also be realized through a synthetically simpler and scalable strategy that introduces a secondary linker, such as a small ditopic molecule, to mediate the bonds between the colloids. Here, we consider the case where the ditopic linker molecules are low-molecular-weight polymers and demonstrate using a model colloid–polymer mixture how macroscopic properties such as the phase behavior as well as the microstructure of the gel can be designed through the polymer molecular weight and concentration. The low-density window for equilibrium gel formation is favorably expanded using longer linkers while necessarily increasing the spacing between all colloids. Furthermore, we show that blends of linkers with different sizes enable wider variation in microstructure for a given target phase behavior. Our computational study suggests a robust and tunable strategy for the experimental realization of equilibrium colloidal gels.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2024

Temperature and density dependent pair potential for deuterium under shock

Large-scale classical molecular dynamics (CMD) simulations naturally include the microscopic physics necessary for atomistic modeling of shock release at the ablator-fuel interface in an inertial confinement fusion (ICF) capsule. Here, the multi-megabar shocks utilized in ICF experiments can drive the deuterium fuel from ambient to electron volt temperatures (T) and multi-fold compression. Modeling interatomic interactions over such an extreme range of conditions is challenging for empirical bond order potentials. We generate a pair potential for deuterium with explicit temperature and mass density dependence from ab initio density functional theory molecular dynamics using the iterative Boltzmann inversion method. This potential accurately reproduces the radial distribution functions and pressures from DFT in CMD equilibrium simulations across a wide range of thermodynamic conditions, yet fails to return the expected Hugoniot relations when used in direct CMD shock simulations.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Simulating sticky particles: A Monte Carlo method to sample a stratification

Many problems in materials science and biology involve particles interacting with strong, short-ranged bonds that can break and form on experimental timescales. Treating such bonds as constraints can significantly speed up sampling their equilibrium distribution, and there are several methods to sample probability distributions subject to fixed constraints. We introduce a Monte Carlo method to handle the case when constraints can break and form. More generally, the method samples a probability distribution on a stratification: a collection of manifolds of different dimensions, where the lower-dimensional manifolds lie on the boundaries of the higher-dimensional manifolds. We show several applications of the method in polymer physics, self-assembly of colloids, and volume calculation in high dimensions.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2021

Calculation of self-diffusion coefficients in supercritical carbon dioxide using mean force kinetic theory

This paper presents an application of mean force kinetic theory (MFT) to the calculation of the self-diffusivity of CO 2 in the supercritical fluid regime. Two modifications to the typical application of MFT are employed to allow its application to a system of molecular species. Therefore, the first is the assumption that the inter-particle potential of mean force can be obtained from the molecule center-of-mass pair correlation function, which in the case of CO 2 is the C–C pair correlation function. The second is a new definition of the Enskog factor that describes the effect of correlations at the surface of the collision volume. The new definition retains the physical picture that this quantity represents a local density increase, resulting from particle correlations, relative to that in the zero density homogeneous fluid limit. These calculations are facilitated by the calculation of pair correlation functions from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using the FEPM2 molecular CO2 model. The self-diffusivity calculated from theory is in good agreement with that from MD simulations up to and slightly beyond the density at the location of the Frenkel line. The calculation is compared with and is found to perform similarly well to other commonly used models but has a greater potential for application to systems of mixed species and to systems of particles with long range interatomic potentials due to electrostatic interactions.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2021

Inverse design of equilibrium cluster fluids applied to a physically informed model

Inverse design strategies have proven highly useful for the discovery of interaction potentials that prompt self-assembly of a variety of interesting structures. However, often the optimized particle interactions do not have a direct relationship to experimental systems. In this work, we show that Relative Entropy minimization is able to discover physically meaningful parameter sets for a model interaction built from depletion attraction and electrostatic repulsion that yield self-assembly of size-specific clusters. Here, we then explore the sensitivity of the optimized interaction potentials with respect to deviations in the underlying physical quantities, showing that clustering behavior is largely preserved even as the optimized parameters are perturbed.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗