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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 181 records · Page 10
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Regulation of Solar Wind Electron Temperature Anisotropy by Collisions and Instabilities

Abstract Typical solar wind electrons are modeled as being composed of a dense but less energetic thermal “core” population plus a tenuous but energetic “halo” population with varying degrees of temperature anisotropies for both species. In this paper, we seek a fundamental explanation of how these solar wind core and halo electron temperature anisotropies are regulated by combined effects of collisions and instability excitations. The observed solar wind core/halo electron data in ( β ∥ , T ⊥ / T ∥ ) phase space show that their respective occurrence distributions are confined within an area enclosed by outer boundaries. Here, T ⊥ / T ∥ is the ratio of perpendicular and parallel temperatures and β ∥ is the ratio of parallel thermal energy to background magnetic field energy. While it is known that the boundary on the high- β ∥ side is constrained by the temperature anisotropy-driven plasma instability threshold conditions, the low- β ∥ boundary remains largely unexplained. The present paper provides a baseline explanation for the low- β ∥ boundary based upon the collisional relaxation process. By combining the instability and collisional dynamics it is shown that the observed distribution of the solar wind electrons in the ( β ∥ , T ⊥ / T ∥ ) phase space is adequately explained, both for the “core” and “halo” components.

Yoon, Peter H. (ORCID:0000000181343790)↗
NASA NTRS1994

A distributed planning concept for Space Station payload operations

The complex and diverse nature of the payload operations to be performed on the Space Station requires a robust and flexible planning approach. The planning approach for Space Station payload operations must support the phased development of the Space Station, as well as the geographically distributed users of the Space Station. To date, the planning approach for manned operations in space has been one of centralized planning to the n-th degree of detail. This approach, while valid for short duration flights, incurs high operations costs and is not conducive to long duration Space Station operations. The Space Station payload operations planning concept must reduce operations costs, accommodate phased station development, support distributed users, and provide flexibility. One way to meet these objectives is to distribute the planning functions across a hierarchy of payload planning organizations based on their particular needs and expertise. This paper presents a planning concept which satisfies all phases of the development of the Space Station (manned Shuttle flights, unmanned Station operations, and permanent manned operations), and the migration from centralized to distributed planning functions. Identified in this paper are the payload planning functions which can be distributed and the process by which these functions are performed.

Hagopian, Jeff↗
NASA NTRS1972

A method for direct numerical integration of the Boltzmann equation

The principal difficulties in numerical solution of the Boltzmann equation are considered. The study is aimed at formulating a numerical solution in such a manner that it contains a minimum amount of excess information at the distribution function level. It is pointed out that the accurate calculation of the distribution function at each point in phase space requires a tremendous number of operations, due to the necessity of solving five-fold quadratures in the collision integral. This results in the operational memory of the digital computer being insufficient to store all the data on the distribution functions at the necessary points in phase space. An algorithm is constructed involving successive iterations of the Boltzmann equation which does not require storage of each step of the new distribution function.

Cheremisin, F. G.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Differential cross-sections for events with missing transverse momentum and jets measured with the ATLAS detector in 13 TeV proton-proton collisions

Measurements of inclusive, differential cross-sections for the production of events with missing transverse momentum in association with jets in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV are presented. The measurements are made with the ATLAS detector using an integrated luminosity of 140 fb –1 and include measurements of dijet distributions in a region in which vector-boson fusion processes are enhanced. They are unfolded to correct for detector resolution and efficiency within the fiducial acceptance, and are designed to allow robust comparisons with a wide range of theoretical predictions. A measurement of differential cross sections for the Z → νν process is made. The measurements are generally well-described by Standard Model predictions except for the dijet invariant mass distribution. Auxiliary measurements of the hadronic system recoiling against isolated leptons, and photons, are also made in the same phase space. Ratios between the measured distributions are then derived, to take advantage of cancellations in modelling effects and some of the major systematic uncertainties. These measurements are sensitive to new phenomena, and provide a mechanism to easily set constraints on phenomenological models. To illustrate the robustness of the approach, these ratios are compared with two common Dark Matter models, where the constraints derived from the measurement are comparable to those set by dedicated detector-level searches.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Modeling fast ion losses due to tearing and internal kink perturbations in MAST-U

Fast ion (FI) loss properties in the presence of tearing mode and internal kink perturbations are numerically investigated for discharges in the MAST-U spherical tokamak, utilizing the MARS-F magnetohydrodynamic stability code and the REORBIT test particle guiding-center orbit-following module. Here, tracing about 100 000 particle markers sampled from the equilibrium distribution of the neutral-beam injection induced FIs, it is found that about 10% out of the total strike the limiting surface (including the divertor surface) in MAST-U discharge 46943, assuming a maximum perturbation of 100 G inside the plasma (corresponding to ~6 G at the Mirnov probe location at the outboard mid-plane). Detailed particle tracing, assuming a uniform initial distribution in the 2D phase space (at given radial locations), reveals that initially counter-current FIs launched near the plasma edge are subject to significant prompt losses, while almost all initially co-current ions remain well confined at the assumed perturbation level. Most lost FIs strike the lower-half of the limiting surface. Finite gyro-radius effects prevent lost ions from striking the top-outer corner of the super-X divertor chamber. A scan of the perturbation level (based on discharge 45163) reveals, not surprisingly, an approximately linear scaling of the particle loss fraction (for counter-current FIs) with respect to the perturbation amplitude.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
NASA NTRS1987

Urey Prize Lecture - Chaotic dynamics in the solar system

Attention is given to solar system cases in which chaotic solutions of Newton's equations are important, as in chaotic rotation and orbital evolution. Hyperion is noted to be tumbling chaotically; chaotic orbital evolution is suggested to be of fundamental importance to an accounting for the Kirkwood gaps in asteroid distribution and for the phase space boundary of the chaotic zone at the 3/1 mean-motion commensurability with Jupiter. In addition, chaotic trajectories in the 2/1 chaotic zone reach very high eccentricities by a route that carries them to high inclinations temporarily.

Wisdom, Jack↗
NASA NTRS1993

Particle drift in the Earth's plasma sheet

We generalize the derivation of the average gradient/curvature-drift for a flux tube filled with an isotropic distribution of particles at specified kinetic energy. The present treatment is restricted to a two-dimensional magnetic field with zero electric field, but it includes all chaotic and Speiser orbits, which do not correspond to the simple picture of gradient/curvature drift. We assume that particles are evenly distributed throughout the regions of phase space allowed by their energy and canonical momentum. This assumption is closely related but not exactly equivalent to the assumption of isotropic pitch-angle distribution. Our derivation assumes that the maximum Larmor radius is small compared to the scale length for equatorial variations in the flux tube volume, but it does not involve any restrictions on the curvature of the field line. The resulting expression for the drift rate is valid for situations where the particle drift velocity is comparable to the thermal speed in some regions. The apparent implication of this generalized treatment is that the existence of very complex non-adiabatic particle trajectories in the plasma sheet may not invalidate previous estimates of the average rate of particle drift out the sides of the tail, estimates that were made under the assumption of simple guiding-center drifts.

Wolf, R. A.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Driven electrostatic phase space vortices in a 1D weakly dissipative Vlasov–Poisson system

In this paper, the effect of collisions on driven electrostatic phase space vortices is analyzed by means of Eulerian simulation for two different collision models. It was demonstrated recently that in the absence of collisions, at late times, steady state phase space vortices manifest to form a plateau in the resonant region of the particle velocity distribution function, due to trapping of particles supporting multiextrema giant phase space vortices (PSVs). In the presence of collisions, over long time, this multiextrema plateau are found to smooth out, since collisions drive the velocity distribution toward Maxwellian, irrespective of how weak the collisions are as long as they are non-zero. In these conditions, kinetic processes and collisionality are found to be in competition, and the evolution of the plasma is found, therefore, to be a result of nontrivial combination of these two effects. An attempt has been made by means of numerical simulations to study the effect of weak collisionality on the electrostatic driven phase space vortices with two types of collision operators: (1) Bhatnagar–Gross–Krook (Krook) collision operator, where the colliding particles can be treated as isolated pairs and, (2) Fokker–Planck (FP) type collision operator (Zakharov–Karpman) in one dimension, where many weak collisions lead to particle diffusion in velocity space. It is shown that depending on the collision model used, the nature of smoothing in velocity space of giant PSVs results in qualitatively very different phase space structures. However, irrespective of the collision model used, excess density fractions over 10% are retained.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Role of non-Gaussian quantum fluctuations in neutrino entanglement

The flavor evolution of neutrinos in environments with large neutrino number densities is an open problem at the nexus of astrophysics and neutrino flavor physics. Among the many unanswered questions pertaining to this problem, it remains to be determined whether neutrino-neutrino coherent scattering can give rise to nontrivial quantum entanglement among neutrinos, and whether this can affect the flavor evolution in a meaningful way. To gain further insight into this question, here we study a simple system of two interacting neutrino beams and obtain the exact phase space explored by this system using the Husimi quasiprobability distribution. We observe that the entanglement induced by the coupling leads to strong delocalization in phase-space with largely non-Gaussian quantum fluctuations. The link between the neutrino entanglement and quantum fluctuations is illustrated using the one- and two-neutrino entropy. In addition, we propose an approximate phase-space method to describe the interacting neutrinos problem, where the exact evolution is replaced by a set of independent mean-field evolutions with a statistical sampling of the initial conditions. The phase-space approach provides a simple and accurate method to describe the gross features of the neutrino entanglement problem. Applications are shown using time-independent and time-dependent Hamiltonians in the nonadiabatic regime.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

An in-situ 3D micro-XRD investigation of water uptake by alkali-silica-reaction (ASR) product

The ASR products in concrete have various chemical compositions. It is yet unclear whether and how these products develop micro-expansion upon moisture ingress. This paper presents a 3D in-situ observation of the crystallography and volume change of an ASR-product-filled vein under varying relative-humidity (R.H.). The vein was observed to contain two layered nano-crystalline phases with distinct basal spacings, and was distributed heterogeneously in space. When R.H. changed from 10% to >38%, the basal spacing increased from 7.43 Å to 8.89 Å for one phase, whereas it remained constant (~10.9 Å) for the other. This is the first time that an ASR product is observed in-situ to exhibit crystal structural expansion during wetting process. However, the product-filled vein exhibited no noticeable swelling when R.H. varied from 10% to 97%. Our findings provide the first direct evidence that the moisturization-induced crystal structural change of ASR product may not be a plausible explanation to the macroscale concrete expansion.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS1993

Physics, chemistry and pulmonary sequelae of thermodegradation events in long-mission space flight

An event in which electronic insulation consisting of polytetrafluoroethylene undergoes thermodegradation on the Space Station Freedom is considered experimentally and theoretically from the initial chemistry and convective transport through pulmonary deposition in humans. The low-gravity enviroment impacts various stages of event simulation. Vapor-phase and particulate thermodegradation products were considered as potential spacecraft contaminants. A potential pathway for the production of ultrafine particles was identified. Different approaches to the simulation and prediction of contaminant transport were studied and used to predict the distribution of generic vapor-phase products in a Space Station model. A lung transport model was used to assess the pulmonary distribution of inhaled particles, and, finally, the impact of adaptation to low gravity on the human response to this inhalation risk was explored on the basis of known physiological modifications of the immune, endocrine, musculoskeletal and pulmonary systems that accompany space flight.

Todd, Paul↗
DOE OSTI2025

Estimating Electron Temperature and Density Using Van Allen Probe Data: Typical Behavior of Energetic Electrons in the Inner Magnetosphere

Abstract The Earth's inner magnetosphere contains multiple electron populations influenced by different factors. The cold electrons of the plasmasphere, warm plasma that contributes to the ring current, and the relativistic plasma of the radiation belts often seem to behave independently. Using omni‐directional flux and energy measurements from the HOPE and Magnetic Electron Ion Spectrometer instruments aboard the Van Allen Probes, we provide a detailed density and temperature description of the inner magnetosphere, offering a comprehensive statistical analysis of the entire Van Allen Probe era. While number density and temperature data at geosynchronous orbit are available, this study focuses on the warm plasma in the inner magnetosphere . Values of density and temperature are extracted by fitting energy and phase space density to obtain the distribution function. The fitted distributions are related to the zeroth and second moments to estimate the number density and temperature. Analysis has indicated that a two Maxwellian fit is sufficient over a wide range of and that there are two independent plasma populations. The more energetic population has a median number density of approximately and a temperature of around 130 keV, with a temperature peak observed between L * = 4 and L * = 4.5. This population is relatively uniform in magnetic local time (MLT). In contrast, the less energetic warm electron population has a median number density of about and a temperature of 7.4 keV. Strong statistical trends in density and temperature across both L * and MLT are presented, along with potential sources driving these variations.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1975

Use of the Wigner representation in scattering problems

The basic equations of quantum scattering were translated into the Wigner representation, putting quantum mechanics in the form of a stochastic process in phase space, with real valued probability distributions and source functions. The interpretative picture associated with this representation is developed and stressed and results used in applications published elsewhere are derived. The form of the integral equation for scattering as well as its multiple scattering expansion in this representation are derived. Quantum corrections to classical propagators are briefly discussed. The basic approximation used in the Monte-Carlo method is derived in a fashion which allows for future refinement and which includes bound state production. Finally, as a simple illustration of some of the formalism, scattering is treated by a bound two body problem. Simple expressions for single and double scattering contributions to total and differential cross-sections as well as for all necessary shadow corrections are obtained.

Bemler, E. A.↗
NASA NTRS1977

A statistical formulation of one-dimensional electron fluid turbulence

A one-dimensional electron fluid model is investigated using the mathematical methods of modern fluid turbulence theory. Non-dissipative equilibrium canonical distributions are determined in a phase space whose co-ordinates are the real and imaginary parts of the Fourier coefficients for the field variables. Spectral densities are calculated, yielding a wavenumber electric field energy spectrum proportional to k to the negative second power for large wavenumbers. The equations of motion are numerically integrated and the resulting spectra are found to compare well with the theoretical predictions.

Fyfe, D.↗
NASA NTRS1978

Statistical formulation of one-dimensional electron fluid turbulence

A one-dimensional electron fluid model is investigated using the mathematical methods of modern fluid turbulence theory. Nondissipative equilibrium canonical distributions are determined in a phase space whose coordinates are the real and imaginary parts of the Fourier coefficients for the field variables. Spectral densities are calculated, yielding a wavenumber electric field energy spectrum proportional to 1/k squared for large wavenumbers. The equations of motion are numerically integrated and the resulting spectra are found to compare well with the theoretical predictions.

Fyfe, D.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Simulation study of Type 2 counterstreaming electrons along auroral field lines

The production of counterstreaming electrons associated with parallel fields along auroral field lines is examined through the use of computer simulation. A 2 1/2-dimensional (two spatial and three velocity dimensions) electrostatic particle algorithm and auroral boundary conditions are used to set up a self-consistent V potential structure. The simulation produces signatures of counterstreaming electrons resembling those observed by the Dynamics Explorer 1 satellite. The main signatures are as follows: (1) the phase space contours of the electron distribution function are elongated along the V-parallel axis, and (2) the energy of electrons streaming in the upward direction is comparable to the energy of the accelerated electron beam. The simulation indicates that a portion of the accelerated electron beam is trapped by large amplitude electrostatic waves produced through the two-stream instability. Strong wave-particle interactions then thermalize the trapped electrons to produce suprathermal electrons streaming in the direction opposite to that of the accelerated electron beam. These results suggest a possible mechanism of producing counterstreaming electron fluxes through nonlinear processes of the two-stream instability.

Wagner, J. S.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Semiclassical approximations in the coherent-state representation

The semiclassical limit of the stationary Schroedinger equation in the coherent-state representation is analyzed simultaneously for the groups W1, SU(2), and SU(1,1). A simple expression for the first two orders for the wave function and the associated semiclassical quantization rule is obtained if a definite choice for the classical Hamiltonian and expansion parameter is made. The behavior of the modulus of the wave function, which is a distribution function in a curved phase space, is studied for the three groups. The results are applied to the quantum triaxial rotor.

Kurchan, J.↗