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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 127 records · Page 7
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2012

PARTICLE DYNAMICS IN THE RECONNECTING HELIOSPHERIC CURRENT SHEET: SOLAR WIND DATA VERSUS THREE-DIMENSIONAL PARTICLE-IN-CELL SIMULATIONS

In this paper, we apply an assumption of the reconnecting heliospheric current sheet (HCS) for explanation of some contradictory results in the experimental detection of the sector boundaries (SBs) from the interplanetary magnetic field and electron pitch-angle measurements. Trajectories, densities, velocity, and pitch-angle distributions of particles accelerated by a super-Dreicer electric field are investigated with 2.5D full kinetic particle-in-cell approach in the HCS assumed to undergo a slow magnetic reconnection process with magnetic field configurations deduced from the solar wind observations. This approach reveals that during motion in a current sheet both kinds of particles, electrons and protons, are to be separated, either fully or partially, with respect to its midplane that can lead to their ejection to the opposite semiplanes that was also observed during the HCS crossings. This separation is found to form Hall's currents and polarization electric field across the current sheet, which distribution over the current sheets allows us to reproduce the magnitudes and temporal profiles of proton and ion velocities measured across the SB (current sheet midplane). This separation process, in turn, divides both kinds of particles on 'transit' and 'bounced' ones depending on a side of the current sheet where they enter it and where they are supposed to be ejected. The transit and bounced protons reproduce rather closely the measured distributions of proton/ion densities about the current sheet midplane with a larger maximum occurring at the heliospheric SB to be formed by the bounced protons and the other two smaller maximums on both sides from the central one to be formed by 'transit' protons. The observed electron distributions of density and energy before and after sector boundary crossings are found to fit the simulated ones for electrons accelerated in a current sheet revealing a sharp increase of density from one side from the HCS boundary and a depression from the other side. The transit electrons are shown to gain energies up to ten of keV while the bounced ones gain only a few tens of eV as often measured in the HCS with a single crossing that results in the bump-in-tail electron distributions leading to Langmuir turbulence. The bounced electrons are shown to be responsible for the increased density of electrons detected at some distance from the HCS boundary (midplane) with the horse shoe-like or medallion- (or locket)-type distributions in pitch angles with the distance, at which electrons turn away from the HCS, being dependent on a magnitude of the guiding magnetic field.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

The onset of ion heating during magnetic reconnection with a strong guide field

The onset of the acceleration of ions during magnetic reconnection is explored via particle-in-cell simulations in the limit of a strong ambient guide field that self-consistently and simultaneously follow the motions of protons and α particles. Heating parallel to the local magnetic field during reconnection with a guide field is strongly reduced compared with the reconnection of anti-parallel magnetic fields. The dominant heating of thermal ions during guide field reconnection results from pickup behavior of ions during their entry into reconnection exhausts and dominantly produces heating perpendicular rather than parallel to the local magnetic field. Pickup behavior requires that the ion transit time across the exhaust boundary (with a transverse scale of the order of the ion sound Larmor radius) be short compared with the ion cyclotron period. This translates into a threshold in the strength of reconnecting magnetic field that favors the heating of ions with high mass-to-charge. A simulation with a broad initial current layer produces a reconnecting system in which the amplitude of the reconnecting magnetic field just upstream of the dissipation region increases with time as reconnection proceeds. The sharp onset of perpendicular heating when the pickup threshold is crossed is documented. A comparison of the time variation of the parallel and perpendicular ion heating with that predicted based on the strength of the reconnecting field establishes the scaling of ion heating with ambient parameters both below and above the pickup threshold. The relevance to observations of ion heating in the solar corona is discussed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

The anisotropic redistribution of free energy for gyrokinetic plasma turbulence in a Z-pinch

For a Z-pinch geometry, we report on the nonlinear redistribution of free energy across scales perpendicular to the magnetic guide field, for a turbulent plasma described in the framework of gyrokinetics. The analysis is performed using a local flux-surface approximation, in a regime dominated by electrostatic fluctuations driven by the entropy mode, with both ion and electron species being treated kinetically. To explore the anisotropic nature of the free energy redistribution caused by the emergence of zonal flows, we use a polar coordinate representation for the field-perpendicular directions and define an angular density for the scale flux. Positive values for the classically defined (angle integrated) scale flux, which denote a direct energy cascade, are shown to be also composed of negative angular sections, a fact that impacts our understanding of the backscatter of energy and the way in which it enters the modeling of sub-grid scales for turbulence. A definition for the flux of free energy across each perpendicular direction is introduced as well, which shows that the redistribution of energy in the presence of zonal flows is highly anisotropic.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2017

High-Power Microwave Oscillator of Twistron Type with Efficiency of 55% for Electron Energy of 180 keV

Highly effective mode of generation of a relativistic microwave oscillator of twistron type is calculated by numerical simulation using an axisymmetric version of completely electromagnetic PiC-code KARAT. With accelerating voltage of 180 kV, electron beam current of 1.2 kA, and 1.9 T guiding magnetic field strength, the simulated stationary generation power is 120 MW at an operating frequency of 10.7 GHz. The efficiency of electron beam power conversion to electromagnetic radiation is 55%, and the electronic efficiency of the oscillator calculated from the change of the initial electron energy is 64%.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2017

Microsecond Electron Beam Source with Electron Energy Up to 400 Kev and Plasma Anode

A new high-power source of electrons with plasma anode for producing high-current microsecond electron beams with electron energy up to 400 keV has been developed, manufactured, and put in operation. To increase the cross section and pulse current duration of the beam, a multipoint explosive emission cathode is used in the electron beam source, and the beam is formed in an applied external guiding magnetic field. The Marx generator with vacuum insulation is used as a high-voltage source. Electron beams with electron energy up to 300–400 keV, current of 5–15 kA, duration of 1.5–3 μs, energy up to 4 kJ, and cross section up to 150 cm{sup 2} have been produced. The operating modes of the electron beam source are realized in which the applied voltage is influenced weakly on the current. The possibility of source application for melting of metal surfaces is demonstrated.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2010

Fast magnetic reconnection in low-density electron-positron plasmas

Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations have been performed to study magnetic reconnection in low-density electron-positron plasmas without a guide magnetic field. Impulsive reconnection rates become of the order of unity when the background density is much smaller than 10% of the density in the initial current layer. It is demonstrated that the outflow speed is less than the upstream Alfven speed, and that the time derivative of the density must be taken into account in the definition of the reconnection rate. The reconnection electric fields in the low-density regime become much larger than the ones in the high-density regime, and it is possible to accelerate the particles to high energies more efficiently. The inertial term in the generalized Ohm's law is the most dominant term that supports a large reconnection electric field. An effective collisionless resistivity is produced and tracks the extension of the diffusion region in the late stage of the reconnection dynamics, and significant broadening of the diffusion region is observed. Because of the broadening of the diffusion region, no secondary islands, which have been considered to play a role to limit the diffusion region, are generated during the extension of the diffusion region in the outflow direction.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2012

Development of high-power gyrotrons with gradually tapered cavity

In high power gyrotrons, the parasitic modes coupled with the operating mode cannot be avoided in the beam-wave interaction. These parasitic modes will decrease the efficiency of the gyrotrons. The purity of the operating mode affected by different tapers should be carefully studied. The steady-state self-consistent nonlinear theory for gyrotron with gradually tapered cavity is developed in this paper. A steady-state calculation code including 'cold cavity' and 'hot cavity' is designed. By comparison, a time-domain model analysis of gyrotron operation is also studied by particle-in-cell (PIC). It is found that the tapers of gyrotron have different influences on the modes coupling between the operating mode and the parasitic modes. During the study, an example of 94 GHz gyrotron with pure operating mode TE{sub 03} has been designed. The purity of the operating mode in the optimized cavity is up to -77 dB, and in output waveguide of the cavity is up to -76 dB. At the same time, the beam-wave interaction in the designed cavity has been simulated, too. An output power of 120 kW, corresponding to 41.6% efficiency and an oscillation frequency of 94.099 GHz have been achieved with a 50 kV, 6 A helical electron beam at a guiding magnetic field of 3.5485 T. The results show that the power in spurious modes of the optimized cavity may be kept far below than that of the traditional tapered cavity.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

A high efficient relativistic backward wave oscillator with coaxial nonuniform slow-wave structure and depth-tunable extractor

A high efficient relativistic backward wave oscillator with coaxial nonuniform slow-wave structures (SWSs) and depth-tunable extractor is presented. The physical mechanism to increase the power efficiency is investigated theoretically and experimentally. It is shown that the nonuniform SWSs, the guiding magnetic field distribution, and the coaxial extractor depth play key roles in the enhancement of the beam-wave power conversion efficiency. The experimental results show that a 1.609 GHz, 2.3 GW microwave can be generated when the diode voltage is 890 kV and the beam current is 7.7 kA. The corresponding power efficiency reaches 33.6%.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2013

High-current long-duration uniform electron beam generation in a diode with multicapillary carbon-epoxy cathode

The results of reproducibly generating an electron beam with a current density of up to 5 kA/cm{sup 2}, without the cathode-anode gap being shorted by the plasma formed inside the cathode carbon-epoxy capillaries, in a ∼350 kV, ∼600 ns diode, with and without an external guiding magnetic field, are presented. The cathode sustained hundreds of pulses without degradation of its emission properties. Time- and space-resolved emissions of the plasma and spectroscopy analyses were used to determine the cathode plasma's density, temperature, and expansion velocity.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2014

Suppression of the asymmetric modes for experimentally achieving gigawatt-level radiation from a Ku-band Cerenkov type oscillator

We present the analysis and suppression of asymmetric modes in a Ku-band Cerenkov-type oscillator numerically and experimentally. The asymmetric modes generated in the initial experiments were identified to be HE{sub 11}, HE{sub 21}, and HE{sub 31} modes, respectively, by analyzing of the dispersion relationships, the simulation results and the experiment phenomenon. The factors, such as the cathode emission uniformity, the diode voltage, guiding magnetic field, and the concentricity play key roles in the excitation and suppression of these asymmetric modes. In the improved experiments, the asymmetric modes were suppressed effectively. In the improved experiments the asymmetric modes are suppressed effectively, and the designed TM{sub 01} mode microwave is generated at a frequency of 13.76 GHz with a power of 1.1 GW, which is in good agreement with numerically predications.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2014

Suppression of the asymmetric competition mode in the relativistic Ku-band coaxial transit-time oscillator

A relativistic Ku-band coaxial transit-time oscillator has been proposed in our previous work. In the experiments, we find that the asymmetric competition mode in the device limits the microwave power with the increase of the input electric power. For solving such a problem, the methods for analysis and suppression of the asymmetric competition mode in the device are investigated theoretically and experimentally. It is shown that the structure and the material of the collector, the concentricity, and the electron emission uniformity play an important part in the suppression of the asymmetric competition mode in the relativistic Ku-band transit-time oscillator. In the subsequent experiments, the asymmetric mode was suppressed effectively. At a low guiding magnetic field of 0.7 T, a microwave pulse with power of 1 GW, frequency of 14.3 GHz close to the simulation one, and efficiency of 20% was generated.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Power combination of two phase-locked high power microwave beams from a new coaxial microwave source based on dual beams

The new coaxial high power microwave source based on dual beams has demonstrated two phase-locked output microwave beams generated by its two sub-sources. In order to achieve a single higher output power, we present a three-port waveguide-based power combiner to combine the two microwave beams. Particle-in-cell simulation results show that when the diode voltage is 675 kV and the guiding magnetic field is 0.8 T, a combined microwave with an average power of about 4.0 GW and a frequency of 9.74 GHz is generated; the corresponding power conversion efficiency is 29%. The combination effect of the combiner is further validated in the diode voltage range from 675 kV to 755 kV as well as in the pulse regime. The simulations indicate that the maximum surface axial electric field strength of the electrodynamic structure is 720 kV/cm, which is relatively low corresponding to an output power of 4.0 GW. The stable combined output suggests the probability of long-pulse operation for the combined source.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

A Ka-band TM{sub 02} mode relativistic backward wave oscillator with cascaded resonators

By combining the Cerenkov-type generator with the cascaded resonators, this paper proposes a Ka-band relativistic backward wave oscillator operating under the guide magnetic field 1.0 T with high power handling capability and high conversion efficiency. It is found that TM{sub 02} can be selected as the operation mode in order to increase the power handling capability and provide sufficient coupling with the electron beam. In slow wave structure (SWS), ripples composed of semicircle on top of the rectangle enhance the wave-beam interaction and decrease the intensity of the electric field on the metallic surface. Taking advantage of the resonator cascades, the output power and the conversion efficiency are promoted greatly. The front cascaded resonators efficiently prevent the power generated in SWS from leaking into the diode region, and quicken the startup of the oscillation due to the premodulation of the beam. However, the post cascade slightly postpones the startup because of the further energy extraction from the electron beam. The numerical simulation shows that generation with power 514 MW and efficiency 41% is obtained under the diode voltage 520 kV and current 2.4 kA. And the microwave with the pure frequency spectrum of 29.35 GHz radiates in the pure TM{sub 01} mode.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Perpendicular diffusion of energetic particles in collisionless plasmas

A fundamental problem in plasma and astrophysics is the interaction between energetic particles and magnetized plasmas. In the current paper, we focus on particle diffusion across the guide magnetic field. It is shown that the perpendicular diffusion coefficient depends only on the parallel diffusion coefficient and the Kubo number. Therefore, one can find four asymptotic limits depending on the values of these two parameters. These regimes are the quasilinear limit, the Kadomtsev and Pogutse limit, the scaling of Rechester and Rosenbluth, and the scaling found by Zybin and Istomin. In the current article, we focus on the Rechester and Rosenbluth scenario because this was not discovered before in the context of collisionless plasmas. Examples and applications are discussed as well. We show that an energy independent ratio of perpendicular and parallel diffusion coefficients can be found and that this ratio can be very small but also close to unity. This is exactly what one observes in the solar wind.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Fast magnetic reconnection due to anisotropic electron pressure

A new regime of fast magnetic reconnection with an out-of-plane (guide) magnetic field is reported in which the key role is played by an electron pressure anisotropy described by the Chew-Goldberger-Low gyrotropic equations of state in the generalized Ohm's law, which even dominates the Hall term. A description of the physical cause of this behavior is provided and two-dimensional fluid simulations are used to confirm the results. The electron pressure anisotropy causes the out-of-plane magnetic field to develop a quadrupole structure of opposite polarity to the Hall magnetic field and gives rise to dispersive waves. In addition to being important for understanding what causes reconnection to be fast, this mechanism should dominate in plasmas with low plasma beta and a high in-plane plasma beta with electron temperature comparable to or larger than ion temperature, so it could be relevant in the solar wind and some tokamaks.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Generation of broadband terahertz radiation using a backward wave oscillator and pseudospark-sourced electron beam

This paper presents for the generation of a small size high current density pseudospark (PS) electron beam for a high frequency (0.2 THz) Backward Wave Oscillator (BWO) through a Doppler up-shift of the plasma frequency. An electron beam ∼1 mm diameter carrying a current of up to 10 A and current density of 10{sup 8} A m{sup −2}, with a sweeping voltage of 42 to 25 kV and pulse duration of 25 ns, was generated from the PS discharge. This beam propagated through the rippled-wall slow wave structure of a BWO beam-wave interaction region in a plasma environment without the need for a guiding magnetic field. Plasma wave assisted beam-wave interaction resulted in broadband output over a frequency range of 186–202 GHz with a maximum power of 20 W.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

A Ka-band radial relativistic backward wave oscillator with GW-class output power

A novel radial relativistic backward wave oscillator with a reflector is proposed and designed to generate GW-level high power microwaves at Ka-band. The segmented radial slow wave structure and the reflector are matched to enhance interaction efficiency. We choose the volume wave TM{sub 01} mode as the working mode due to the volume wave characteristic. The main structural parameters of the novel device are optimized by particle-in-cell simulation. High power microwaves with power of 2 GW and a frequency of 29.4 GHz are generated with 30% efficiency when the electron beam voltage is 383 kV, the beam current is 17 kA, and the guiding magnetic field is only 0.6 T. Simultaneously, the highest electric field in the novel Ka-band device is just about 960 kV/cm in second slow wave structure.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Superradiant Ka-band Cherenkov oscillator with 2-GW peak power

The generation of a 2-GW microwave superradiance (SR) pulses has been demonstrated at 29-GHz using a single-mode relativistic backward-wave oscillator possessing the beam-to-wave power conversion factor no worse than 100%. A record-breaking radiation power density in the slow-wave structure (SWS) of ∼1.5 GW/cm{sup 2} required the use of high guiding magnetic field (7 T) decreasing the beam losses to the SWS in strong rf fields. Despite the field strength at the SWS wall of 2 MV/cm, a single-pass transmission mode of a short SR pulse in the SWS allows one to obtain extremely high power density in subnanosecond time scale due to time delay in the development of the breakdown phenomena.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗