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At least 253 records · Page 14
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Magnetic geometry effects on turbulent density fluctuations in Wendelstein 7-X

Line-integrated density fluctuation measurements from the core of the optimised stellarator Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) are studied in the context of magnetic field geometry changes. The amplitude as well as the spectral distribution of fluctuations is affected by varying the magnetic field configuration. Weaker turbulent fluctuations are observed in configurations with higher rotational transform and lower magnetic mirror depth. Simulations with the gyrokinetic codes stella and GENE-3D are used to investigate the role of magnetic geometry for the experimental observations. The stabilising effect of the high rational transform configuration is reproduced by simulations and can be associated with stronger shaping of the magnetic field. This leads to increased finite Larmor radius and local shear effects, which limit the toroidal extent of ion temperature gradient (ITG) modes. For W7-X configurations with higher magnetic mirror depth, gyrokinetic theory and simulations predict weaker fluctuations, since they are closer to having the maximum-J property, which has a stabilising effect on trapped-electron mode and ITG. The opposite trend is observed experimentally, which can therefore not be explained by geometry effects on turbulence alone.

Wendelstein-7X↗
DOE OSTI2015

A possible mechanism of the enhancement and maintenance of the shear magnetic field component in the current sheet of the Earth’s magnetotail

The influence of the shear magnetic field component, which is directed along the electric current in the current sheet (CS) of the Earth’s magnetotail and enhanced near the neutral plane of the CS, on the nonadiabatic dynamics of ions interacting with the CS is studied. The results of simulation of the nonadiabatic ion motion in the prescribed magnetic configuration similar to that observed in the magnetotail CS by the CLUSTER spacecraft demonstrated that, in the presence of some initial shear magnetic field, the north-south asymmetry in the ion reflection/refraction in the CS is observed. This asymmetry leads to the formation of an additional current system formed by the oppositely directed electric currents flowing in the northern and southern parts of the plasma sheet in the planes tangential to the CS plane and in the direction perpendicular to the direction of the electric current in the CS. The formation of this current system perhaps is responsible for the enhancement and further maintenance of the shear magnetic field near the neutral plane of the CS. The CS structure and ion dynamics observed in 17 intervals of the CS crossings by the CLUSTER spacecraft is analyzed. In these intervals, the shear magnetic field was increased near the neutral plane of the CS, so that the bell-shaped spatial distribution of this field across the CS plane was observed. The results of the present analysis confirm the suggested scenario of the enhancement of the shear magnetic field near the neutral plane of the CS due to the peculiarities of the nonadiabatic ion dynamics.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
NASA NTRS1976

Planetary magnetospheres: A comparative view

There are eight large bodies in the solar system about which definite statements regarding the existence or nonexistence of a magnetic field of internal origin can now be made. Of these bodies (Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Earth's Moon), only Venus and the Moon have negligible surface magnetic fields. By negligible is meant that the magnetic fields are so weak that they do not sensibly perturb the local solar wind. The other bodies provide an interesting zoo of magnetic field configurations and attendant charged particle behavior. Six of these bodies have magnetic fields, and two do not. Furthermore, of those which have magnetic fields, it appears that only that of Mars is ineffective in accelerating charged particles.

Dessler, A. J.↗
DOE OSTI2015

AN EXACT ANALYTICAL SOLUTION FOR THE INTERSTELLAR MAGNETIC FIELD IN THE VICINITY OF THE HELIOSPHERE

An analytical representation of the interstellar magnetic field in the vicinity of the heliosphere is derived. The three-dimensional field structure close to the heliopause is calculated as a solution of the induction equation under the assumption that it is frozen into a prescribed plasma flow resembling the characteristic interaction of the solar wind with the local interstellar medium. The usefulness of this analytical solution as an approximation to self-consistent magnetic field configurations obtained numerically from the full MHD equations is illustrated by quantitative comparisons.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1995

Cross-tail magnetic flux ropes as observed by the GEOTAIL spacecraft

Ten transient magnetic structures in Earth's magnetotail, as observed in GEOTAIL measurements, selected for early 1993 (at (-) X(sub GSM) = 90 - 130 Earth radii), are shown to have helical magnetic field configurations similar to those of interplanetary magnetic clouds at 1 AU but smaller in size by a factor of approximately = 700. Such structures are shown to be well approximated by a comprehensive magnetic force-free flux-rope model. For this limited set of 10 events the rope axes are seen to be typically aligned with the Y(sub GSM) axis and the average diameter of these structures is approximately = 15 Earth radii.

Lepping, R. P.↗
DOE OSTI2026

Interpretation of high-harmonic fast-wave propagation in the scrape-off layer of NSTX-U as a geometrically bounded-waveguide mode

This paper revisits the onset of high-harmonic fast-wave (HHFW) propagation in the scrape-off layer (SOL) plasma of the NSTX/NSTX-U spherical tokamak, motivated by past HHFW heating and current drive experiments and modelling. Previously, the fast-wave propagation in the SOL was correlated with the opening (suppression) of the fast-wave right-hand cutoff layer in front of the antenna. In this work, the SOL propagation is interpreted as a geometric waveguide mode guided by the SOL geometry, whose radial width can be comparable to the wave’s perpendicular wavelength in the HHFW regime. A two-dimensional circular model is first employed using full-wave solvers to characterise the poloidal eigenmode structures and to clarify their relationship to annulus resonance. By progressively adding a tokamak-like magnetic-field configuration, starting from a uniform axial field, the effects of magnetic-field gradients and pitch on the SOL waveguide mode are characterised. The poloidal mode numbers supported by the SOL plasma agree well with analytic estimates, indicating that an anisotropic plasma in a bounded geometry selectively supports and amplifies the resonant poloidal mode number. Additionally, two-dimensional axisymmetric NSTX-U simulations demonstrate that the SOL eigenmode features identified in the circular model persist in the experimentally relevant configurations. A control approach based on lengthening the wave perpendicular wavelength relative to the SOL width, including a higher magnetic (B)-field operation, is discussed. The analysis here shows the key role of a bounded geometry in interpreting HHFW eigenmode coupling and propagation in the NSTX-U SOL plasma.

plasma heating↗
NASA NTRS1991

The magnetic field and magnetospheric configuration of Uranus

A significant and unique planetary magnetic field discovered by Voyager 2 is presented. A large tilt of 58.6 deg of the magnetic-dipole axis from the rotation axis was found. Combined with a large offset of 0.3 RU of the magnetic dipole from the center of the planet, the moment of 0.23 gauss-RU3 leads to field magnitudes at the surface which vary widely between 0.1 and 1.0 gauss. A simple diagram illustrating the offset tilted dipole of Uranus and some field lines is shown. A more exact and accurate spherical-harmonic model of the planetary field, which includes both dipole and quadrupole moments, is derived. There exists a well-developed bipolar magnetic tail on the night side of the planet which rotates daily about the extended planet-sunline with Uranus because of the large obliquity of the Uranian rotation axis.

Ness, Norman F.↗
DOE OSTI2015

Regimes of pulsed formation of a compact plasma configuration with a high energy input

Results of experiments on the formation of a compact toroidal magnetic configuration at the Compact Toroid Challenge setup are presented. The experiments were primarily aimed at studying particular formation stages. Two series of experiments, with and without an auxiliary capacitor bank, were conducted. The magnetic field was measured, its time evolution and spatial distribution over the chamber volume were determined, and its influence on the formation regimes was investigated.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

Electron cyclotron maser emission in coronal arches and solar radio type V bursts

Solar radio type V bursts were classified as a special spectral class based on their moderately long duration, wide bandwidth, and sense of polarization opposite of associated type III bursts. However, type V bursts are also closely related to the preceding type III bursts. They have an approximately equal source height and the same dispersion of position with frequency. Electron cyclotron maser (ECM) instability driven by beam electrons has been used to explain type III bursts in recent years. We propose ECM emission as the physical process of type V solar radio bursts. According to the observed properties of type V and III bursts, we propose that energetic electrons in excited type V continuum are trapped in coronal loops, which are adjacent to the open field lines traced by type III electrons. With the proposed magnetic field configuration and the ECM emission mechanism, the observed properties of type V bursts, such as long duration, wide bandwidth, and opposite sense of polarization can be reasonably explained by our model.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Numerical Simulation of Electron Magnetohydrodynamics with Landau-quantized Electrons in Magnetar Crusts

Abstract In magnetar crusts, magnetic fields are sufficiently strong to confine electrons into a small to moderate number of quantized Landau levels. This can have a dramatic effect on the crust's thermodynamic properties, generating field-dependent de Haas–van Alphen oscillations. We previously argued that the large-amplitude oscillations of the magnetic susceptibility could enhance the ohmic dissipation of the magnetic field by continuously generating small-scale, rapidly dissipating field features. This could be important to magnetar field evolution and contribute to their observed higher temperatures. To study this, we performed quasi-3D numerical simulations of electron MHD in a representative volume of neutron star crust matter, for the first time including the magnetization and magnetic susceptibility resulting from Landau quantization. We find that the potential enhancement in the ohmic dissipation rate due to this effect can be a factor ∼3 for temperatures of the order of 10 8 K, and ∼4.5 for temperatures of the order of 5 × 10 7 K, depending on the magnetic field configuration. The nonlinear Hall term is crucial to this amplification: without it, the magnetic field decay is only enhanced by a factor ≲2 even at 5 × 10 7 K. These effects generate a high wavenumber plateau in the magnetic energy spectrum associated with the small-scale de Haas–van Alphen oscillations. Our results suggest that this mechanism could help explain the magnetar heating problem, though due to the effect's temperature-dependence, full magneto-thermal evolution simulations in a realistic stellar model are needed to judge whether it is viable explanation.

Rau, Peter B. (ORCID:0000000152209277)↗
NASA NTRS2021

Maps of Magnetic Field Strength in the OMC-1 Using HAWC+FIR Polarimetric Data

Far-infrared dust polarimetry enables the study of interstellar magnetic fields via tracing of the polarized emission from dust grains that are partially aligned with the direction of the field. The advent of high-quality polarimetric data has permitted the use of statistical methods to extract both the direction and magnitude of the magnetic field. In this work, the Davis–Chandrasekhar–Fermi technique is used to make maps of the plane-of-sky (POS) component of the magnetic field in the Orion Molecular Cloud (OMC-1) by combining polarization maps at 53, 89, 154 and 214 μm from HAWC+/SOFIA with maps of density and velocity dispersion. In addition, maps of the local dispersion of polarization angles are used in conjunction with Zeeman measurements to estimate a map of the strength of the line-of-sight (LOS) component of the field. Combining these maps, information about the threedimensional magnetic field configuration (integrated along the LOS) is inferred over the OMC-1 region. POS magnetic field strengths of up to 2 mG are observed near the BN/KL object, while the OMC-1 bar shows strengths of up to a few hundred μG. These estimates of the magnetic field components are used to produce maps of the mass-to-magnetic-flux ratio (M/Φ)—a metric for probing the conditions for star formation in molecular clouds— and determine regions of sub- and supercriticality in OMC-1. Such maps can provide invaluable input and comparison to MHD simulations of star formation processes in filamentary structures of molecular clouds. Unified Astronomy Thesaurus concepts: Molecular clouds (1072); Giant molecular clouds (653); Interstellar magnetic fields (845); Far infrared astronomy (529)

Jordan A Guerra↗
NASA NTRS1986

Force-free magnetic fields - The magneto-frictional method

The problem under discussion is that of calculating magnetic field configurations in which the Lorentz force j x B is everywhere zero, subject to specified boundary conditions. We choose to represent the magnetic field in terms of Clebsch variables in the form B = grad alpha x grad beta. These variables are constant on any field line so that each field line is labeled by the corresponding values of alpha and beta. When the field is described in this way, the most appropriate choice of boundary conditions is to specify the values of alpha and beta on the bounding surface. We show that such field configurations may be calculated by a magneto-frictional method. We imagine that the field lines move through a stationary medium, and that each element of magnetic field is subject to a frictional force parallel to and opposing the velocity of the field line. This concept leads to an iteration procedure for modifying the variables alpha and beta, that tends asymptotically towards the force-free state. We apply the method first to a simple problem in two rectangular dimensions, and then to a problem of cylindrical symmetry that was previously discussed by Barnes and Sturrock (1972). In one important respect, our new results differ from the earlier results of Barnes and Sturrock, and we conclude that the earlier article was in error.

Yang, W. H.↗
DOE OSTI2015

The breaks and the hidden components in the power-law spectra of synchrotron radiation of the self-consistent current structures

Widespread use of a broken-power-law description of the spectra of synchrotron emission of various plasma objects requires an analysis of origin and a proper interpretation of spectral components. We show that, for a self-consistent magnetic configuration in a collisionless plasma, these components may be angle-dependent according to an anisotropic particle momentum distribution and may have no counterparts in a particle energy distribution. That has never been studied analytically and is in contrast to a usual model of synchrotron radiation, assuming an external magnetic field and a particle ensemble with isotropic momentum distribution. We demonstrate that for the wide intervals of observation angle the power-law spectra and, in particular, the positions and number of spectral breaks may be essentially different for the cases of the self-consistent and not-self-consistent magnetic fields in current structures responsible for the synchrotron radiation of the ensembles of relativistic particles with the multi-power-law energy distributions.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2011

SIMULATING WAVES IN THE UPPER SOLAR ATMOSPHERE WITH SURYA: A WELL-BALANCED HIGH-ORDER FINITE-VOLUME CODE

We consider the propagation of waves in a stratified non-isothermal magnetic atmosphere. The situation of interest corresponds to waves in the outer solar (chromosphere and corona) and other stellar atmospheres. The waves are simulated by using a high-resolution, well-balanced finite-volume-based massively parallel code named SURYA. Numerical experiments in both two and three space dimensions involving realistic temperature distributions, driving forces, and magnetic field configurations are described. Diverse phenomena such as mode conversion, wave acceleration at the transition layer, and driving-dependent wave dynamics are observed. We obtain evidence for the presence of coronal Alfven waves in some three-dimensional configurations. Although some of the incident wave energy is transmitted into the corona, a large proportion of it is accumulated in the chromosphere, providing a possible mechanism for chromospheric heating.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

THE POWER OF IMAGING: CONSTRAINING THE PLASMA PROPERTIES OF GRMHD SIMULATIONS USING EHT OBSERVATIONS OF Sgr A*

Recent advances in general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations have expanded and improved our understanding of the dynamics of black-hole accretion disks. However, current simulations do not capture the thermodynamics of electrons in the low density accreting plasma. This poses a significant challenge in predicting accretion flow images and spectra from first principles. Because of this, simplified emission models have often been used, with widely different configurations (e.g., disk- versus jet-dominated emission), and were able to account for the observed spectral properties of accreting black holes. Exploring the large parameter space introduced by such models, however, requires significant computational power that exceeds conventional computational facilities. In this paper, we use GRay, a fast graphics processing unit (GPU) based ray-tracing algorithm, on the GPU cluster El Gato, to compute images and spectra for a set of six general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations with different magnetic field configurations and black-hole spins. We also employ two different parametric models for the plasma thermodynamics in each of the simulations. We show that, if only the spectral properties of Sgr A* are used, all 12 models tested here can fit the spectra equally well. However, when combined with the measurement of the image size of the emission using the Event Horizon Telescope, current observations rule out all models with strong funnel emission, because the funnels are typically very extended. Our study shows that images of accretion flows with horizon-scale resolution offer a powerful tool in understanding accretion flows around black holes and their thermodynamic properties.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Scaling of magnetic dissipation and particle acceleration in ABC fields

Using particle-in-cell numerical simulations with electron–positron pair plasma, we study how the efficiencies of magnetic dissipation and particle acceleration scale with the initial coherence length λ 0 in relation to the system size L of the two-dimensional ‘Arnold–Beltrami–Childress’ (ABC) magnetic field configurations. Topological constraints on the distribution of magnetic helicity in two-dimensional systems, identified earlier in relativistic force-free simulations, that prevent the high-(L/λ 0 ) configurations from reaching the Taylor state, limit the magnetic dissipation efficiency to about ϵ diss ≃60% . Here we find that the peak growth time scale of the electric energy τ E,peak scales with the characteristic value of initial Alfvén velocity β A,ini like τ E,peak ∝(λ 0 /L)β$^{–3}_{A,ini}$ . The particle energy change is decomposed into non-thermal and thermal parts, with non-thermal energy gain dominant only for high initial magnetisation. The most robust description of the non-thermal high-energy part of the particle distribution is that the power-law index is a linear function of the initial magnetic energy fraction.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

MAGNETICALLY AND BARYONICALLY DOMINATED PHOTOSPHERIC GAMMA-RAY BURST MODEL FITS TO FERMI-LAT OBSERVATIONS

We consider gamma-ray burst models where the radiation is dominated by a photospheric region providing the MeV Band spectrum, and an external shock region responsible for the GeV radiation via inverse Compton scattering. We parameterize the initial dynamics through an acceleration law {Gamma}{proportional_to}r {sup {mu}}, with {mu} between 1/3 and 1 to represent the range between an extreme magnetically dominated and a baryonically dominated regime, depending also on the magnetic field configuration. We compare these models to several bright Fermi-LAT bursts, and show that both the time-integrated and the time-resolved spectra, where available, can be well described by these models. We discuss the parameters which result from these fits, and discuss the relative merits and shortcomings of the two models.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

ON THE SUPPORT OF SOLAR PROMINENCE MATERIAL BY THE DIPS OF A CORONAL FLUX TUBE

The dense prominence material is believed to be supported against gravity through the magnetic tension of dipped coronal magnetic field. For quiescent prominences, which exhibit many gravity-driven flows, hydrodynamic forces are likely to play an important role in the determination of both the large- and small-scale magnetic field distributions. In this study, we present the first steps toward creating a three-dimensional magneto-hydrostatic prominence model where the prominence is formed in the dips of a coronal flux tube. Here 2.5D equilibria are created by adding mass to an initially force-free magnetic field, then performing a secondary magnetohydrodynamic relaxation. Two inverse polarity magnetic field configurations are studied in detail, a simple o-point configuration with a ratio of the horizontal field (B{sub x} ) to the axial field (B{sub y} ) of 1:2 and a more complex model that also has an x-point with a ratio of 1:11. The models show that support against gravity is either by total pressure or tension, with only tension support resembling observed quiescent prominences. The o-point of the coronal flux tube was pulled down by the prominence material, leading to compression of the magnetic field at the base of the prominence. Therefore, tension support comes from the small curvature of the compressed magnetic field at the bottom and the larger curvature of the stretched magnetic field at the top of the prominence. It was found that this method does not guarantee convergence to a prominence-like equilibrium in the case where an x-point exists below the prominence flux tube. The results imply that a plasma {beta} of {approx}0.1 is necessary to support prominences through magnetic tension.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗