Onset of instabilities in coaxial Hall current accelerators.
Coaxial electrodes with electric and magnetic fields to study instability in MPD arcs
Hassan, H. A.↗
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Onset of instabilities in coaxial Hall current accelerators
Coaxial electrodes with electric and magnetic fields to study instability in MPD arcs
Hassan, H. A.↗
Ion cyclotron bands in VLF saucers
In the wideband VLF data obtained by the polar orbiting DE-1 satellite over the polar night ion trough region of the upper ionosphere, conspicuous frequency-band structures are found to occur both in absorption and emission, particularly associating with VLF saucers. The attenuation bands indicate that the ions of atomic hydrogen from the polar ionosphere are accelerated by the ac electric fields of VLF waves oscillating normal to the static magnetic field, analogous to a cyclotron accelerator. The observed frequencies of the cyclotron harmonics suggest that the acceleration is taking place in the layer below the satellite at a geocentric distance of less than about 1.5 earth radii. This example indicates the existence of upward propagating hiss at those altitudes inside the auroral zone. On the other hand, the frequency shifts of the emission bands are attributed to a combination of two different types of Doppler shift, one due to the orbital motion of the satellite and the other due to the upward motion of the medium at the emission source. This indicates the existence of an upward plasma flow at the source, with a velocity of the order of 20 km/s inside the saucer. The amount of this frequency shift decreases with increasing harmonic order, indicating a higher phase velocity for the electrostatic waves of higher harmonic order.
Maeda, Kaichi↗
Attosecond x-ray free-electron lasers utilizing an optical undulator in a self-selection regime
Accelerator-based x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) are the latest addition to the revolutionary tools of discovery for the 21st century. The two major components of an XFEL are an accelerator-produced electron beam and a magnetic undulator, which tend to be kilometer-scale long and expensive. A proof-of-principle demonstration of free-electron lasing at 27 nm using beams from compact laser wakefield accelerators was shown recently by using a magnetic undulator. However, scaling these concepts to x-ray wavelengths is far from straightforward as the requirements on the beam quality and jitters become much more stringent. Here, we present an ultracompact scheme to produce tens of attosecond x-ray pulses with several GW peak power utilizing a novel aspect of the FEL instability using a highly chirped, prebunched, and ultrabright tens of MeV electron beam from a plasma-based accelerator interacting with an optical undulator. The FEL resonant relation between the prebunched period and the energy selects resonant electrons automatically from the highly chirped beam which leads to a stable generation of attosecond x-ray pulses. Furthermore, two-color attosecond pulses with subfemtosecond separation can be produced by adjusting the energy distribution of the electron beam so that multiple FEL resonances occur at different locations within the beam. Such a tunable coherent attosecond x-ray sources may open up a new area of attosecond science enabled by x-ray attosecond pump/probe techniques. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
He I VECTOR MAGNETOMETRY OF FIELD-ALIGNED SUPERPENUMBRAL FIBRILS
Atomic-level polarization and Zeeman effect diagnostics in the neutral helium triplet at 10830 A in principle allow full vector magnetometry of fine-scaled chromospheric fibrils. We present high-resolution spectropolarimetric observations of superpenumbral fibrils in the He I triplet with sufficient polarimetric sensitivity to infer their full magnetic field geometry. He I observations from the Facility Infrared Spectropolarimeter are paired with high-resolution observations of the H{alpha} 6563 A and Ca II 8542 A spectral lines from the Interferometric Bidimensional Spectrometer from the Dunn Solar Telescope in New Mexico. Linear and circular polarization signatures in the He I triplet are measured and described, as well as analyzed with the advanced inversion capability of the ''Hanle and Zeeman Light'' modeling code. Our analysis provides direct evidence for the often assumed field alignment of fibril structures. The projected angle of the fibrils and the inferred magnetic field geometry align within an error of {+-}10 Degree-Sign . We describe changes in the inclination angle of these features that reflect their connectivity with the photospheric magnetic field. Evidence for an accelerated flow ({approx}40 m s{sup -2}) along an individual fibril anchored at its endpoints in the strong sunspot and weaker plage in part supports the magnetic siphon flow mechanism's role in the inverse Evershed effect. However, the connectivity of the outer endpoint of many of the fibrils cannot be established.
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
MONTE CARLO SIMULATION MODEL OF ENERGETIC PROTON TRANSPORT THROUGH SELF-GENERATED ALFVEN WAVES
A new Monte Carlo simulation model for the transport of energetic protons through self-generated Alfven waves is presented. The key point of the model is that, unlike the previous ones, it employs the full form (i.e., includes the dependence on the pitch-angle cosine) of the resonance condition governing the scattering of particles off Alfven waves-the process that approximates the wave-particle interactions in the framework of quasilinear theory. This allows us to model the wave-particle interactions in weak turbulence more adequately, in particular, to implement anisotropic particle scattering instead of isotropic scattering, which the previous Monte Carlo models were based on. The developed model is applied to study the transport of flare-accelerated protons in an open magnetic flux tube. Simulation results for the transport of monoenergetic protons through the spectrum of Alfven waves reveal that the anisotropic scattering leads to spatially more distributed wave growth than isotropic scattering. This result can have important implications for diffusive shock acceleration, e.g., affect the scattering mean free path of the accelerated particles in and the size of the foreshock region.
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
ON THE RADIO POLARIZATION SIGNATURE OF EFFICIENT AND INEFFICIENT PARTICLE ACCELERATION IN SUPERNOVA REMNANT SN 1006
Radio polarization observations provide essential information on the degree of order and orientation of magnetic fields, which themselves play a key role in the particle acceleration processes that take place in supernova remnants (SNRs). Here we present a radio polarization study of SN 1006, based on combined Very Large Array and Australia Telescope Compact Array observations at 20 cm that resulted in sensitive images with an angular resolution of 10 arcsec. The fractional polarization in the two bright radio and X-ray lobes of the SNR is measured to be 0.17, while in the southeastern sector, where the radio and non-thermal X-ray emission are much weaker, the polarization fraction reaches a value of 0.6 {+-} 0.2, close to the theoretical limit of 0.7. We interpret this result as evidence of a disordered, turbulent magnetic field in the lobes, where particle acceleration is believed to be efficient, and a highly ordered field in the southeast, where the acceleration efficiency has been shown to be very low. Utilizing the frequency coverage of our observations, an average rotation measure of {approx}12 rad m{sup -2} is determined from the combined data set, which is then used to obtain the intrinsic direction of the magnetic field vectors. While the orientation of magnetic field vectors across the SNR shell appear to be radial, a large fraction of the magnetic vectors lie parallel to the Galactic plane. Along the highly polarized southeastern rim, the field is aligned tangent to the shock, and therefore also nearly parallel to the Galactic plane. These results strongly suggest that the ambient field surrounding SN 1006 is aligned with this direction (i.e., from northeast to southwest) and that the bright lobes are due to a polar cap geometry. Our study establishes that the most efficient particle acceleration and generation of magnetic turbulence in SN 1006 is attained for shocks in which the magnetic field direction and shock normal are quasi-parallel, while inefficient acceleration and little to no generation of magnetic turbulence are obtained for the quasi-perpendicular case.
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
COLLISION-INDUCED MAGNETIC RECONNECTION AND A UNIFIED INTERPRETATION OF POLARIZATION PROPERTIES OF GRBs AND BLAZARS
The jet composition and energy dissipation mechanism of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and blazars are fundamental questions that remain not fully understood. One plausible model is to interpret the γ-ray emission of GRBs and optical emission of blazars as synchrotron radiation of electrons accelerated from the collision-induced magnetic dissipation regions in Poynting-flux-dominated jets. The polarization observation is an important and independent information to test this model. Based on our recent 3D relativistic MHD simulations of collision-induced magnetic dissipation of magnetically dominated blobs, here we perform calculations of the polarization properties of the emission in the dissipation region and apply the results to model the polarization observational data of GRB prompt emission and blazar optical emission. In this article, we show that the same numerical model with different input parameters can reproduce well the observational data of both GRBs and blazars, especially the 90° polarization angle (PA) change in GRB 100826A and the 180° PA swing in blazar 3C279. This supports a unified model for GRB and blazar jets, suggesting that collision-induced magnetic reconnection is a common physical mechanism to power the relativistic jet emission from events with very different black hole masses.
magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)↗
ACCELERATION OF PARTICLES AT THE TERMINATION SHOCK OF A RELATIVISTIC STRIPED WIND
The relativistic wind of obliquely rotating pulsars consists of toroidal stripes of opposite magnetic field polarity, separated by current sheets of hot plasma. By means of two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we investigate particle acceleration and magnetic field dissipation at the termination shock of a relativistic striped wind. At the shock, the flow compresses and the alternating fields annihilate by driven magnetic reconnection. Irrespective of the stripe wavelength {lambda} or the wind magnetization {sigma} (in the regime {sigma} >> 1 of magnetically dominated flows), shock-driven reconnection transfers all the magnetic energy of alternating fields to the particles, whose average Lorentz factor increases by a factor of {sigma} with respect to the pre-shock value. The shape of the post-shock spectrum depends primarily on the ratio {lambda}/(r{sub L} {sigma}), where r{sub L} is the relativistic Larmor radius in the wind. The spectrum becomes broader as the value of {lambda}/(r{sub L} {sigma}) increases, passing from a relativistic Maxwellian to a flat power-law tail with slope around -1.5, populated by particles accelerated by the reconnection electric field. Close to the equatorial plane of the wind, where the stripes are symmetric, the highest energy particles resulting from magnetic reconnection can escape ahead of the shock, and be injected into a Fermi-like acceleration process. In the post-shock spectrum, they populate a power-law tail with slope around -2.5, which extends beyond the flat component produced by reconnection. Our study suggests that the spectral break between the radio and the optical band in Pulsar Wind Nebulae can be a natural consequence of particle acceleration at the termination shock of striped pulsar winds.
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
Building Magnets at Brookhaven National Laboratory - An Account
The development of superconducting wire and cable in the late 20th century enabled high field magnets and thus much higher beam collision energies in accelerators. These higher collision energies have allowed experiments to probe further into the structure of matter at the most fundamental, subatomic level. The behavior of the early universe, where these high energies prevailed, and its evolution over time are what these experiments seek to investigate. The subject has aroused the curiosity of not only scientists but of the public as well and has facilitated the support needed to build and operate such expensive machines and experiments. The path forward has not been easy, however. Success in most projects has been mixed with failure, progress with ineptitude. The building of high energy accelerators is mostly a story of capable people doing their best to develop new and unusual technology toward some defined goal, with success and failure in uneven measure along the way. It is also a story of administrative imperatives that have had unpredictable effects on a project’s success, depending mostly on the people in the administrative roles and the decisions that they have made.
43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
Flare Ribbon Signatures of Reconnection Plasmoids
Solar flares are explosive space weather events that rapidly convert stored magnetic energy into bulk motion, plasma heating, and particle acceleration. Understanding the structure and dynamics of the magnetic reconnection that powers flares is critical for predicting the energy release. In particular, the amount of energy transferred to energetic particles is thought to be highly dependent on whether the reconnection is primarily turbulent (e.g., plasmoid dominated) or instead laminar. We present high-resolution MHD simulations of three-dimensional reconnection in an eruptive flare and compare the results to recent data. Although flare reconnection is challenging to observe directly in the corona, highly detailed constraints on its dynamics can be obtained from observations of flare ribbons that track the chromospheric footpoints of newly reconnected field lines. The analogues of flare ribbons in our simulations are identified by tracking discontinuous changes in field-line magnetic connectivity due to the reconnection. In our highest-resolution calculations, we find that these ribbon analogues are highly structured and exhibit many ‘whorl’ patterns that are linked to turbulent plasmoids in the reconnecting current sheet. Flare ribbon fine structure therefore reveals crucial information about the fundamental turbulent vs. laminar nature of the reconnection. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding reconnection-driven energy release throughout the heliosphere.
J. T. Dahlin↗
Heating and Acceleration of Solar Wind Ions by Turbulent Wave Spectrum in Inhomogeneous Expanding Plasma
Near the Sun (< 10Rs) the acceleration, heating, and propagation of the solar wind are likely affected by the background inhomogeneities of the magnetized plasma. The heating and the acceleration of the solar wind ions by turbulent wave spectrum in inhomogeneous plasma is studied using a 2.5D hybrid model. The hybrid model describes the kinetics of the ions, while the electrons are modeled as massless neutralizing fluid in an expanding box approach. Turbulent magnetic fluctuations dominated by power-law frequency spectra, which are evident from in-situ as well as remote sensing measurements, are used in our models. The effects of background density inhomogeneity across the magnetic field on the resonant ion heating are studied. The effect of super- Alfvenic ion drift on the ion heating is investigated. It is found that the turbulent wave spectrum of initially parallel propagating waves cascades to oblique modes, and leads to enhanced resonant ion heating due to the inhomogeneity. The acceleration of the solar wind ions is achieved by the parametric instability of large amplitude waves in the spectrum, and is also affected by the inhomogeneity. The results of the study provide the ion temperature anisotropy and drift velocity temporal evolution due to relaxation of the instability. The non-Maxwellian velocity distribution functions (VDFs) of the ions are modeled in the inhomogeneous solar wind plasma in the acceleration region close to the Sun.
Ofman, Leon↗
Multi-dipolar microwave plasmas and their application to negative ion production
During the past decade multi-dipolar plasmas have been employed for various purposes such as surface treatments in biomedicine, physical and chemical vapour deposition for hydrogen storage, and applications in mechanical engineering. On the other hand, due to the design and operational mode of these plasma sources (i.e., strong permanent magnets for the electron cyclotron resonance coupling, low working pressure, and high electron density achieved) they are suitable for studying fundamental mechanisms involved in negative ion sources used in magnetically confined fusion and particle accelerators. Thus, this study presents an overview of fundamental results obtained with: (i) a single dipolar source, (ii) a network of seven dipolar plasma sources inserted into a magnetic multipolar chamber (Camembert III), and (iii) four dipolar sources housed in a smaller metallic cylinder (ROSAE III). Investigations with Langmuir probes of electron energy probability functions revealed the variation of the plasma properties versus the radial distance from the axis of a dipolar source in its mid plane and allowed the determination of the proportion between hot and cold electron populations in both chambers. These results are compared with the density of hydrogen negative ions, measured using the photodetachment technique. Electron energy probability functions obtained in these different configurations show the possibility of both hot and cold electron production. The former is a prerequisite for increasing the vibrational level of molecules and the dissociation degree and the latter for producing negative ions via dissociative attachment of the cold electrons or via surface production induced by H atoms.
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
Measurements of the Growth and Saturation of Electron Weibel Instability in Optical-Field Ionized Plasmas
The temporal evolution of the magnetic field associated with electron thermal Weibel instability in optical-field ionized plasmas is measured using ultrashort (1.8 ps), relativistic (45 MeV) electron bunches from a linear accelerator. The self-generated magnetic fields are found to self-organize into a quasistatic structure consistent with a helicoid topology within a few picoseconds and such a structure lasts for tens of picoseconds in underdense plasmas. Here, the measured growth rate agrees well with that predicted by the kinetic theory of plasmas taking into account collisions. Magnetic trapping is identified as the dominant saturation mechanism.
Electric & magnetic plasma measurements↗
SPATIAL GROWTH OF CURRENT-DRIVEN INSTABILITY IN RELATIVISTIC ROTATING JETS AND THE SEARCH FOR MAGNETIC RECONNECTION
Using the three-dimensional relativistic magnetohydrodynamic code RAISHIN, we investigated the influence of the radial density profile on the spatial development of the current-driven kink instability along magnetized rotating, relativistic jets. For the purposes of our study, we used a nonperiodic computational box, the jet flow is initially established across the computational grid, and a precessional perturbation at the inlet triggers the growth of the kink instability. We studied light and heavy jets with respect to the environment depending on the density profile. Different angular velocity amplitudes have been also tested. The results show the propagation of a helically kinked structure along the jet and a relatively stable configuration for the lighter jets. The jets appear to be collimated by the magnetic field, and the flow is accelerated owing to conversion of electromagnetic into kinetic energy. We also identify regions of high current density in filamentary current sheets, indicative of magnetic reconnection, which are associated with the kink-unstable regions and correlated with the decrease of the sigma parameter of the flow. We discuss the implications of our findings for Poynting-flux-dominated jets in connection with magnetic reconnection processes. We find that fast magnetic reconnection may be driven by the kink-instability turbulence and govern the transformation of magnetic into kinetic energy, thus providing an efficient way to power and accelerate particles in active galactic nucleus and gamma-ray-burst relativistic jets.
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
Unconventional ideas for ionization cooling of muons
Small muon beams increase the luminosity of a muon collider. Reducing the momentum and position spreads of muons reduces emittance and leads to small, cool beams. Ionization cooling has been observed at the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment. 6D emittance reduction by a factor of 100, 000 has been achieved in simulation. Another factor of 5 in cooling would meet the basic requirements of a high luminosity muon collider. In this paper we compare, for the first time, the amount of RF needed in a cooling channel to previous linacs. Here, we also outline three methods aimed to help achieve a final factor of 5 in 6D cooling.
43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
SuperKEKB beam final focus superconducting magnet system
The SuperKEKB was designed and constructed as the upgraded accelerator of KEKB. In this accelerator design, the nano-beam scheme of collision was applied and a luminosity of 8 x10 35 cm -2 s -1 was targeted. In the design, the beam final focus system was the key component in the accelerator hardware elements. This final focus system consists of 55 superconducting magnets. In this paper, the designs of the magnets, the cryostats and the cryogenic system are shown, and the field measurement results are reported. The SuperKEKB beam operation with the final focus system started on 2018 March 19, and the magnet quench events up to 2020 December 16 are described.
43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
LINEAR LATTICE AND TRAJECTORY RECONSTRUCTION AND CORRECTION AT FAST LINEAR ACCELERATOR
The low energy part of the FAST linear accelerator based on 1.3 GHz superconducting RF cavities was successfully commissioned [1]. During commissioning, beam based model dependent methods were used to correct linear lattice and trajectory. Lattice correction algorithm is based on analysis of beam shape from profile monitors and trajectory responses to dipole correctors. Trajectory responses to field gradient variations in quadrupoles and phase variations in superconducting RF cavities were used to correct bunch offsets in quadrupoles and accelerating cavities relative to their magnetic axes. Details of used methods and experimental results are presented.
43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗