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Results for “PLASMA DYNAMICS”

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 1,801 records · Page 100
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

High-Mach number, laser-driven magnetized collisionless shocks

Collisionless shocks are ubiquitous in space and astrophysical systems, and the class of supercritical shocks is of particular importance due to their role in accelerating particles to high energies. While these shocks have been traditionally studied by spacecraft and remote sensing observations, laboratory experiments can provide reproducible and multi-dimensional datasets that provide complementary understanding of the underlying microphysics. We present experiments undertaken on the OMEGA and OMEGA EP laser facilities that show the formation and evolution of high-Mach number collisionless shocks created through the interaction of a laser-driven magnetic piston and magnetized ambient plasma. Through time-resolved, 2-D imaging we observe large density and magnetic compressions that propagate at super-Alfvenic speeds and that occur over ion kinetic length scales. Electron density and temperature of the initial ambient plasma are characterized using optical Thomson scattering. Measurements of the piston laser-plasma are modeled with 2-D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations, which are used to initialize 2-D particle-in-cell simulations of the interaction between the piston and ambient plasmas. The numerical results show the formation of collisionless shocks, including the separate dynamics of the carbon and hydrogen ions that constitute the ambient plasma and their effect on the shock structure. Furthermore, the simulations also show the shock separating from the piston, which we observe in the data at late experimental times.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Resonant excitation of whistler waves by a helical electron beam

Chorus-like whistler mode waves that are known to play a fundamental role in driving radiation belt dynamics are excited on the Large Plasma Device by the injection of a helical electron beam into a cold plasma. The mode structure of the excited whistler wave is identified using a phase correlation technique showing that the waves are excited through a combination of Landau resonance, cyclotron resonance, and anomalous cyclotron resonance. The dominant wave mode excited through cyclotron resonance is quasi-parallel propagating, whereas wave modes excited through Landau resonance and anomalous cyclotron resonance propagate at oblique angles that are close to the resonance cone. An analysis of the linear wave growth rates captures the major observations in the experiment. Here, the results have important implications for the generation process of whistler waves in the Earth’s inner magnetosphere.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

Quantifying Platelet Margination in Diabetic Blood Flow

According to this article, patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) develop thrombotic abnormalities strongly associated with cardiovascular diseases. In addition to the changes of numerous coagulation factors such as elevated levels of thrombin and fibrinogen, the abnormal rheological effects of red blood cells (RBCs) and platelets flowing in blood are crucial in platelet adhesion and thrombus formation in T2DM. An important process contributing to the latter is the platelet margination. We employ the dissipative particle dynamics method to seamlessly model cells, plasma, and vessel walls. We perform a systematic study on RBC and platelet transport in cylindrical vessels by considering different cell shapes, sizes, and RBC deformabilities in healthy and T2DM blood, as well as variable flowrates and hematocrit. In particular, we use cellular-level RBC and platelet models with parameters derived from patient-specific data and present a sensitivity study. We find T2DM RBCs, which are less deformable compared to normal RBCs, lower the transport of platelets toward the vessel walls, whereas platelets with higher mean volume (often observed in T2DM) lead to enhanced margination. Furthermore, increasing the flowrate or hematocrit enhances platelet margination. We also investigated the effect of platelet shape and observed a nonmonotonic variation with the highest near-wall concentration corresponding to platelets with a moderate aspect ratio of 0.38. We examine the role of white blood cells (WBCs), whose count is increased notably in T2DM patients. We find that WBC rolling or WBC adhesion tends to decrease platelet margination due to hydrodynamic effects. To the best of our knowledge, such simulations of blood including all blood cells have not been performed before, and our quantitative findings can help separate the effects of hydrodynamic interactions from adhesive interactions and potentially shed light on the associated pathological processes in T2DM such as increased inflammatory response, platelet activation and adhesion, and ultimately thrombus formation.

Biophysics↗
DOE OSTI2014

Dynamic measurement of the helium concentration of evolving tungsten nanostructures using Elastic Recoil Detection during plasma exposure

Helium (He) concentration depth profiles of evolving tungsten (W) nanostructures have been measured for the first time using in situ Elastic Recoil Detection (ERD) throughout plasma irradiation. In this work, exposures resulting in fuzzy and non-fuzzy surfaces were analyzed in order to illuminate the role of He during the development of these surface morphologies. ERD was performed on samples with surface temperatures from $T_s$ = 530–1100 K and irradiated by He flux densities of $Γ_{\text{He}}$ ~ 10 20 –10 22 m –2 s –1 . He concentration profiles in samples that developed either non-fuzzy or fuzzy surfaces are uniformly shaped with concentrations of 1.5–7 at.%, which is presumed to be too low for pressure driven growth models. Therefore, surface morphology changes are not perpetuated by continuous bubble bursting deformation. Also, a threshold in He flux density above 10 20 m –2 s –1 is suggested by using in situ ERD to monitor the depth profile evolution of the He-rich layer while changing the flux during exposure.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

On the correspondence between quantum and classical variational principles

Here, classical variational principles can be deduced from quantum variational principles via formal reparameterization of the latter. It is shown that such reparameterization is possible without invoking any assumptions other than classicality and without appealing to dynamical equations. As examples, first principle variational formulations of classical point-particle and cold-fluid motion are derived from their quantum counterparts for Schrodinger, Pauli, and Klein-Gordon particles.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

Non-conformal attractor in boost-invariant plasmas

We study the dissipative evolution of (0+1)-dimensionally expanding media with Bjorken symmetry using the Boltzmann equation for massive particles in relaxation-time approximation. Breaking conformal symmetry by a mass induces a non-zero bulk viscous pressure in the medium. It is shown that even a small mass (in units of the local temperature) drastically modifies the well-known attractor for the shear Reynolds number previously observed in massless systems. For generic nonzero particle mass, neither the shear nor the bulk viscous pressure relax quickly to a non-equilibrium attractor; they approach the hydrodynamic limit only late, at small values of the inverse Reynolds numbers. Only the longitudinal pressure, which is a combination of thermal, shear and bulk viscous pressures, continues to show early approach to a far-off-equilibrium attractor, driven by the rapid longitudinal expansion at early times. Second-order dissipative hydrodynamics based on a gradient expansion around locally isotropic thermal equilibrium fails to reproduce this attractor.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Traveling waves in Hall-magnetohydrodynamics and the ion-acoustic shock structure

Hall-magnetohydrodynamics (HMHD) is a mixed hyperbolic-parabolic partial differential equation that describes the dynamics of an ideal two fluid plasma with massless electrons. We study the only shock wave family that exists in this system (the other discontinuities being contact discontinuities and not shocks). We study planar traveling wave solutions and we find solutions with discontinuities in the hydrodynamic variables, which arise due to the presence of real characteristics in Hall-MHD. We introduce a small viscosity into the equations and use the method of matched asymptotic expansions to show that solutions with a discontinuity satisfying the Rankine-Hugoniot conditions and also an entropy condition have continuous shock structures. The lowest order inner equations reduce to the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, plus an equation which implies the constancy of the magnetic field inside the shock structure. We are able to show that the current is discontinuous across the shock, even as the magnetic field is continuous, and that the lowest order outer equations, which are the equations for traveling waves in inviscid Hall-MHD, are exactly integrable. We show that the inner and outer solutions match, which allows us to construct a family of uniformly valid continuous composite solutions that become discontinuous when the diffusivity vanishes.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Dynamics of the fully stripped ion-hydrogen atom charge exchange process in dense quantum plasmas

The plasma screening effects of dense quantum plasmas on charge exchange processes of a fully stripped ion colliding with a hydrogen atom are studied by the classical trajectory Monte Carlo method. The inter-particle interactions are described by the exponential cosine-screened Coulomb potentials. It is found that in weak screening conditions, cross sections increase with the increase of the ionic charge Z. However, in strong screening conditions, the dependence of cross sections on the ionic charge is related to the incident particle energy. At high energies, cross sections show a linear increase with the increase of Z, whereas at low energies, cross sections for Z≥4 become approximately the same. The He{sup 2+} and C{sup 6+} impacting charge exchange cross sections in dense quantum plasmas are also compared with those in weakly coupled plasmas. The interactions are described by the static screened Coulomb potential. It is found that for both He{sup 2+} and C{sup 6+}, the oscillatory screening effects of dense quantum plasmas are almost negligible in weak screening conditions. However, in strong screening conditions, the oscillatory screening effects enhance the screening effects of dense quantum plasmas, and the enhancement becomes more and more significant with the increase of the screening parameter and the ionic charge.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2017

A generalized Ewald decomposition for screened Coulomb interactions

Medium-range interactions occur in a wide range of systems, including charged-particle systems with varying screening lengths. We generalize the Ewald method to charged systems described by interactions involving an arbitrary dielectric response function ϵ(𝐤). We provide an error estimate and optimize the generalization to find the break-even parameters that separate a neighbor list-only algorithm from the particle-particle particle-mesh algorithm. We examine the implications of different choices of the screening length for the computational cost of computing the dynamic structure factor. We then use our new method in molecular dynamics simulations to compute the dynamic structure factor for a model plasma system and examine the wave-dispersion properties of this system.

Dharuman, Gautham↗
DOE OSTI2019

Probing ion species separation and ion thermal decoupling in shock-driven implosions using multiple nuclear reaction histories

Simultaneously measured DD, DT, and D 3 He reaction histories are used to probe the impacts of multi-ion physics during the shock phase of inertial confinement fusion implosions. In these relatively hydrodynamiclike (burn-averaged Knudsen number ⟨N K ⟩ ~0.3) shock-driven implosions, average-ion hydrodynamic DUED simulations are able to reasonably match burnwidths, nuclear yields, and ion temperatures. However, kinetic-ion FPION simulations are able to better simulate the timing differences and time-resolved reaction rate ratios between DD, DT, and D 3 He reactions. FPION simulations suggest that the D 3 He/DT reaction rate ratio is most directly impacted by ion species separation between the 3 He and T ions, whereas the D 3 He/DD reaction rate ratio is affected by both ion species separation and ion temperature decoupling effects.

Hydrodynamic codes↗
DOE OSTI2021

On the merit of hot ion mode for tearing mode stabilization

The stabilization of tearing modes with rf driven current benefits from the cooperative feedback loop between rf power deposition and electron temperature within the island. This effect, termed rf current condensation, can greatly enhance and localize the current driven within magnetic islands. It has previously been shown that the condensation effect opens the possibility of passive stabilization with broad rf profiles, as would be typical of LHCD for steady state operation. Here, we show that this self-healing effect can be dramatically amplified by operation in a hot ion mode, due to the additional electron heat source provided by the hotter ions.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Kinetic Landau-fluid closures of non-Maxwellian distributions

New kinetic Landau-fluid closures, based on the cutoff Maxwellian distribution, are derived. A special static case is considered (the frequency ω=0). In the strongly collisional regime, our model reduces to Braginskii's heat flux model, and the transport is local. In the weak collisional regime, our model indicates that the heat flux is non-local and recovers the Hammett–Perkins model while the value of the cutoff velocity approaches to infinity. We compare the thermal transport coefficient χ of Maxwellian, cutoff Maxwellian and super-Gaussian distribution. The results show that the reduction of the high-speed tail particles leads to the corresponding reduction of the thermal transport coefficient χ across the entire range of collisionality, more reduction of the free streaming transport toward the weak collisional regime. In the collisionless limit, χ approaches to zero for the cutoff Maxwellian and the super-Gaussian distribution but remains finite for Maxwellian distribution. χ is complex if the cutoff Maxwellian distribution is asymmetric. The Im(χ) approaches to different convergent values in both collisionless and strongly collisional limit, respectively. It yields an additional streaming heat flux in comparison with the symmetric cutoff Maxwellian distribution. Furthermore, due to the asymmetric distribution, there is a background heat flux q0 though there is no perturbation. Furthermore, the derived Landau-fluid closures are general for fluid moment models, and applicable for the cutoff Maxwellian distribution in an open magnetic field line region, such as the scape-off-layer of Tokamak plasmas, in the thermal quench plasmas during a tokamak disruption, and the super-Gaussian electron distribution function due to inverse bremsstrahlung heating in laser-plasma studies.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Linear stability analysis via simulated annealing and accelerated relaxation

Simulated annealing (SA) is a kind of relaxation method for finding equilibria of Hamiltonian systems. A set of evolution equations is solved with SA, which is derived from the original Hamiltonian system so that the energy of the system changes monotonically while preserving Casimir invariants inherent to noncanonical Hamiltonian systems. The energy extremum reached by SA is an equilibrium. Since SA searches for an energy extremum, it can also be used for stability analysis when initiated from a state where a perturbation is added to an equilibrium. The procedure of the stability analysis is explained, and some examples are shown. Because the time evolution is computationally time consuming, efficient relaxation is necessary for SA to be practically useful. An acceleration method is developed by introducing time dependence in the symmetric kernel used in the double bracket, which is part of the SA formulation described here. An explicit formulation for low-beta reduced magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) in cylindrical geometry is presented. In conclusion, since SA for low-beta reduced MHD has two advection fields that relax, it is important to balance the orders of magnitude of these advection fields.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Ground state rotational and kinetic temperatures of C 2 molecules in a laser-produced plasma

This study presents an experimental comparison between rotational and kinetic temperatures of molecular species in a laser-produced plasma, utilizing tunable laser absorption spectroscopy. We analyzed high-resolution and time-resolved absorption spectra of 31 rotational transitions within the Phillips A 1 II u –X 1 Σ g 3-0 band of the C 2 molecule, measured from a laser-produced graphite plasma in ~2 Torr argon, within the 771–781 nm spectral range. Spectral fitting provided quantitative state column densities of C 2 rotational energy levels in the ground electronic and vibrational states. Boltzmann analysis revealed thermalized rotational distributions showing rotational temperatures decreasing from 3000 to 600 K within 5–500 μs following the onset of the laser plasma. The measured kinetic and rotational temperatures of C 2 molecules are comparable, suggesting that collisional processes in the laser-produced plasma are sufficient to maintain thermal equilibrium between the C 2 molecules and the Ar background gas.

Absorption spectroscopy↗
DOE OSTI2014

Thermophysical and gas-dynamic characteristics of laser-induced gasplasma flows under femtosecond laser ablation of titanium in vacuum

We report the results of experimental investigation of thermophysical and gas-dynamic characteristics of the gas-plasma flows induced by ultrashort (45 – 60 fs) laser pulse irradiation (the radiation wavelength λ = 400, 800 nm) of a titanium target in vacuum (∼5 × 10{sup -4} mbar). The use of combined interferometric technique and complex experimental data processing allowed us to estimate the momentum coupling coefficient (C{sub m} ∼ 10{sup -4} N W{sup -1}), the efficiency of laser energy conversion to the kinetic energy of the gas-plasma flow (65% – 85%), the spatiotemporal distributions of the particle density (n{sub e} = 10{sup 18} – 10{sup 20} cm{sup -3}) and velocity ((v)=4 – 9 km s{sup -1}), the static (10{sup 6} – 10{sup 8} Pa) and total (10{sup 7} – 10{sup 11} Pa) pressure and temperature (T=7 – 50 kK) in the flow. Our data are compared with published data obtained by other methods. (interaction of laser radiation with matter. laser plasma)

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

Cellulose synthase complexes act in a concerted fashion to synthesize highly aggregated cellulose in secondary cell walls of plants

Significance Plant cell walls are important in plant development and for textiles, wood products, and bioenergy. Cellulose, the microfibrillar component of primary cell walls (PCWs) and secondary cell walls (SCWs), is formed by cellulose synthase complexes (CSCs) at the plasma membrane. Here, we show that CSCs behave differently during PCW and SCW synthesis and form microfibrils with different organization. During PCW synthesis, dispersed CSCs synthesize cellulose microfibrils with low aggregation, whereas during SCW synthesis, densely arranged groups of CSCs move coherently to synthesize highly aggregated microfibrils. Our study suggests that controlled alterations in CSC distribution and orchestrated movements contribute to the high density and bundling of cellulose microfibrils in SCWs.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Precision Tests of the Nonlinear Mode Coupling of Anisotropic Flow via High-Energy Collisions of Isobars

Valuable information on dynamics of expanding fluids can be inferred from the response of such systems to perturbations in their initial geometry. We apply this technique in high-energy 96 Ru+ 96 Ru and 96 Zr+ 96 Zr collisions to scrutinize the expansion dynamics of the quark-gluon plasma, where the initial geometry perturbations are sourced by the differences in deformations and radial profiles between 96 Ru and 96 Zr, and the collective response is captured by the change in anisotropic flow V n between the two collision systems. Using a transport model, we analyze how the nonlinear coupling between lower-order flow harmonics V 2 and V 3 to the higher-order flow harmonics V 4 and V 5 , expected to scale as V 4 NL = χ 4 V 2 2 and V 5NL = χ 5 V 2 V 3 , gets modified as one moves from 96 Ru+ 96 Ru to 96 Zr+ 96 Zr systems. We find that these scaling relations are valid to high precision: variations of order 20% in V 4NL and V 5NL due to differences in quadrupole deformation, octupole deformation, and nuclear skin modify χ 4 and χ 5 by about 1–2%. Percent-level deviations are however larger than the expected experimental uncertainties and could be measured. Therefore, collisions of isobars with different nuclear structures are a unique tool to isolate subtle nonlinear effects in the expansion of the quark-gluon plasma that would be otherwise impossible to access in a single collision system.

Physics↗
DOE OSTI2025

Effects of size of an oxide layer on the surface properties of lithium irradiated by deuterium plasma

We investigate how growth of an oxide film will influence the deuterium recycling properties of Li on plasma facing surfaces. Lithium films on the walls or plasma-facing material surfaces of a fusion vacuum vessel improves plasma performance in part by removing residual impurity atoms from the plasma. Oxygen atoms, from residual water vapor or eroded oxide surfaces, are a prominent ubiquitous impurity that can create a layer of oxide on lithium films. The results of the work herein also indicate a possibility for determining the thickness of the oxide layer on such Li films by measuring the reflection probability of incident deuterium particles from the surface.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

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