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Comparison of microbial strains for tolerance to and catabolism of lignin stream constituents toward evaluating microbial hosts for lignin bioconversion.
Shock-less dynamics were observed during the ablation phase in tungsten wire array experiments carried out on the 1.4 MA, 240 ns MAGPIE generator at Imperial College London. This behaviour contrasts with the shock structures which were seen to dominate in previous experiments on aluminium arrays [Swadling et al., Phys. Plasmas 20, 022705 (2013)]. In this paper, we present experimental results and make comparisons both with calculations of the expected mean free paths for collisions between the ablation streams and with previously published Thomson scattering measurements of the plasma parameters in these arrays [Harvey-Thompson et al., Phys. Plasmas 19, 056303 (2012)].
This paper aims to provide the overview of occurrence, distribution and origin of the heavy minerals in the study area. A total of 45 selected stream sediment heavy mineral concentrate samples were panned using standard dulangs, dried and separated from other light minerals using bromoform. The heavy minerals were separated into different fractions at different amperes using Frantz Isodynamic magnetic separator. Mineral identification was done using binocular microscope augmented by X-ray diffraction analyses. Mineral abundance data were analysed graphically using triangular diagrams to show their origin. Dominant minerals present in the heavy mineral samples collected are ilmenite, cassiterite, tourmaline, zircon, topaz, and magnetite. The less common minerals, present in trace amounts are hematite, xenotime, allanite, monazite, rutile, anatase, leucoxene, chromite, garnet and olivine. Examination of the heavy mineral assemblage shows that they originated from granite batholiths of the Main Range, Changkat Rembian as well as from the metasedimentary rock in the area. The gold flakes present are found together with cassiterite and topaz indicating that gold originates from the mineralized veins contact-metamorphosed metasedimentary rocks. Almost all samples collected contain cassiterite grains in various amounts. From the mineral assemblage, the source of cassiterite originates from the mineralized quartz veins that cut granitic rocks of Main Range, Changkat Rembian as well as the metasedimentary rock in the area. Greisenized veins containing quartz, mica and tourmaline with the presence of wolframite and arsenopyrite also contribute to the presence of cassiterite in this study area.
The dust kinetic Alfvén wave (DKAW) instability is studied in a uniform dusty magnetoplasma by incorporating the superthermality effects of the electrons and perpendicularly streaming κ-distributed ions. The dispersion relation of the DKAW instability is investigated in the low-β{sub d} Lorentzian plasma limit. The solutions are analyzed for various scenarios of dusty and dusty-free plasmas. It is shown that the presence of dust particles and the cross-field superthermal ions sensibly modify the dispersion characteristics of the low-frequency DKAW. The present results are only valid for a frequency regime well below the dust cyclotron frequency. Numerical calculations are carried out for the growth rates by taking different dust parameters into account. It is found that the nonthermality is more effective for the dust kinetic Alfvén waves in the perpendicular direction as compared to the parallel one. The relevance of the results to the low-β{sub d} regions of space and astrophysical plasmas is highlighted.
A four-component plasma composed of a drifting (parallel to ambient magnetic field) population of warm electrons, drifting (anti-parallel to ambient magnetic field) cool electrons, stationary hot electrons, and thermal ions is studied in an attempt to further our understanding of the excitation mechanisms of broadband electrostatic noise (BEN) in the Earth's magnetospheric regions such as the magnetosheath, plasmasphere, and plasma sheet boundary layer (PSBL). Using kinetic theory, beam-driven electrostatic instabilities such as the ion-acoustic, electron-acoustic instabilities are found to be supported in our multi-component model. The dependence of the instability growth rates and real frequencies on various plasma parameters such as beam speed, number density, temperature, and temperature anisotropy of the counter-streaming (relative to ambient magnetic field) cool electron beam are investigated. It is found that the number density of the anti-field aligned cool electron beam and drift speed play a central role in determining which instability is excited. Using plasma parameters which are closely correlated with the measurements made by the Cluster satellites in the PSBL region, we find that the electron-acoustic and ion-acoustic instabilities could account for the generation of BEN in this region.
In collisionless plasmas, only kinetic instabilities and fluctuations are effective in reducing the free energy and scatter plasma particles, preventing an increase of their anisotropy. Solar energetic outflows into the interplanetary plasma give rise to important thermal anisotropies and counterstreaming motions of plasma shells, and the resulting instabilities are expected to regulate the expansion of the solar wind. The present paper combines quasilinear theory and kinetic particle-in-cell simulations in order to study the weakly nonlinear saturation of the ordinary mode in hot counter-streaming plasmas with a temperature anisotropy as a follow-up of the paper by Seough et al. [Phys. Plasmas 22, 082122 (2015)]. This instability provides a plausible mechanism for the origin of dominating, two-dimensional spectrum of transverse magnetic fluctuations observed in the solar wind. Stimulated by the differential motion of electron counterstreams the O mode instability may convert their free large-scale energy by nonlinear collisionless dissipation on plasma particles.
Our paper presents a study of the two-stream instability of an electron beam propagating in a finite-size plasma placed between two electrodes. It is shown that the growth rate in such a system is much smaller than that of an infinite plasma or a finite size plasma with periodic boundary conditions. Even if the width of the plasma matches the resonance condition for a standing wave, a spatially growing wave is excited instead with the growth rate small compared to that of the standing wave in a periodic system. Furthermore, the approximate expression for this growth rate is γ≈(1/13)ω pe (n b /n p )(Lω pe /v b )ln(Lω pe /v b )[1-0.18 cos (Lω pe /v b +π/2)], where ωpe is the electron plasma frequency, n b and n p are the beam and the plasma densities, respectively, v b is the beam velocity, and L is the plasma width. The frequency, wave number, and the spatial and temporal growth rates, as functions of the plasma size, exhibit band structure. Finally, the amplitude of saturation of the instability depends on the system length, not on the beam current. For short systems, the amplitude may exceed values predicted for infinite plasmas by more than an order of magnitude.
The nonlinear evolution of the ion–ion streaming instability (IISI) is studied using numerical techniques novel to this problem that afford direct insight into the evolution of the particle distributions of each species. Here, during the linear phase of the instability, we demonstrate quantitative agreement with linear kinetic theory. Subsequently, the electrostatic field generated by the IISI causes ring-like velocity distributions of ions to form that are both heated and slowed to varying degrees relative to their initial flows. Due to variation in the trapping conditions for ion species of differing charge-to-mass ratio, when flows of multiple species interact, the nonlinear evolution of each species can be starkly different: we show a case where a lighter ion species is completely stopped by a heavier ion species via the IISI alone (i.e., without collisions) and, for the first time, demonstrate how the IISI can introduce a relative flow between ion species that initially have the same flow velocities, thereby separating them.
A novel source for broadband millimeter-wave RF is being designed at Los Alamos National Laboratory utilizing the two-stream instability. This RF source offers the potential for consistent output power over a large bandwidth on a single device. The source is designed to use two co-axial electron beams coupled into solenoidal magnetic fields. This is accomplished using two cathodes independently modulated nested in each other. The electron beam energy from the innermost cathode will fall in the range between 15 and 20 keV with the beam energy from the outer cathode being 75%–95% of the inner beam energy. In order to efficiently match the beam from the outer cathode into the solenoidal magnetic field, shields are used around the cathodes to shape the electric field in the gun region to extend the electrostatic focal length of the beams for better coupling into the magnetic field. As a result, we present the design of electron guns and expected performance using Trak simulations.
Various systems can be modeled as a point-like explosion of ionized debris into a magnetized, collisionless background plasma-including astrophysical examples, active experiments in space, and laser-driven laboratory experiments. Debris streaming from the explosion parallel to the magnetic field may drive multiple resonant and non-resonant ion-ion beam instabilities, some of which can efficiently couple the debris energy to the background and may even support the formation of shocks. We present a large-scale hybrid (kinetic ions + fluid electrons) particle-in-cell simulation, extending hundreds of ion inertial lengths from a 3D explosion, that resolves these instabilities. We show that the character of these instabilities differs notably from the 1D equivalent by the presence of unique transverse structure. Additional 2D simulations explore how the debris beam length, width, density, and speed affect debris-background coupling, with implications for the generation of quasi-parallel shocks.
Electron cyclotron drift instability (ECDI) and ion–ion two stream instability (IITSI) are both kinetic instabilities that can be present in low-temperature, partially magnetized plasmas. The coupling of instabilities in a three-dimensional configuration leads to the existence of more than one unstable roots to the kinetic dispersion relation. In this paper, a generalized method has been developed for numerically evaluating solutions to the three-dimensional dispersion relation for coupled ECDI and IITSI, assuming cold singly and doubly charged ions and a Maxwellian velocity distribution function for the electrons. The present study demonstrates the coupling between ECDI and IITSI that affects the most unstable mode as a function of the wavenumbers in three dimensions and various plasma properties, including the applied electric field, magnetic field, electron temperature, ion velocities, and plasma density. One of the most notable results is that, while the most unstable mode with the largest growth rate is in the direction of the E×B drift in the two-dimensional cases, the most unstable mode for the three-dimensional configuration occurs in the oblique direction between the applied electric field and the E×B drift. Here, this agrees with experimental observations in cross field plasma sources using coherent Thomson scattering.
Significance Electron two-stream instability (ETSI) is believed to be responsible for the radio bursts observed in both the solar corona and interplanetary medium. What nonlinear kinetic processes self-consistently reconcile the several orders of magnitude difference between the short linear saturation time scale of ETSI and the long duration of bursts is fundamental in plasma turbulence and has remained unsolved for nearly 50 y. Using massive particle-in-cell simulations, we find a self-consistent and complete nonlinear solution to this problem.
A novel new sorbent for the separation of krypton from off-gas streams resulting from the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel has been developed and evaluated. A hydrogen mordenite powder was successfully incorporated into a macroporous polymer binder and formed into spherical beads. The engineered form sorbent retained the characteristic surface area and microporosity indicative of mordenite powder. The sorbent was evaluated for krypton adsorption capacities utilizing thermal swing operations achieving capacities of 100 mmol of krypton per kilogram of sorbent at a temperature of 191 K. A krypton adsorption isotherm was also obtained at 191 K with varying krypton feed gas concentrations. Adsorption/desorption cycling effects were also evaluated with results indicating that the sorbent experienced no decrease in krypton capacity throughout testing.
We analyze the concentration of solid particles in vortices created and sustained by radial buoyancy in protoplanetary disks, e.g., baroclinic vortex growth. Besides the gas drag acting on particles, we also allow for back-reaction from dust onto the gas. This becomes important when the local dust-to-gas ratio approaches unity. In our two-dimensional, local, shearing sheet simulations, we see high concentrations of grains inside the vortices for a broad range of Stokes numbers, St. An initial dust-to-gas ratio of 1:100 can easily be reversed to 100:1 for St = 1.0. The increased dust-to-gas ratio triggers the streaming instability, thus counter-intuitively limiting the maximal achievable overdensities. We find that particle trapping inside vortices opens the possibility for gravity assisted planetesimal formation even for small particles (St = 0.01) and a low initial dust-to-gas ratio of 1:10{sup 4}, e.g., much smaller than in the previously studied magnetohydrodynamic zonal flow case.
Separating resolved and unresolved sources in large imaging surveys is a fundamental step to enable downstream science, such as searching for extragalactic transients in wide-field time-domain surveys. Here we present our method to effectively separate point sources from the resolved, extended sources in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Surveys (LS). We develop a supervised machine learning model based on the Gradient Boosting algorithm XGBoost. The features input to the model are purely morphological and are derived from the tabulated LS data products. We train the model using ∼2 × 10 5 LS sources in the COSMOS field with HST morphological labels and evaluate the model performance on LS sources with spectroscopic classification from the DESI Data Release 1 (∼2 × 10 7 objects) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 17 (∼3 × 10 6 objects), as well as on ∼2 × 10 8 Gaia stars. A significant fraction of LS sources are not observed in every LS filter, and we therefore build a “Hybrid” model as a linear combination of two XGBoost models, each containing features combining aperture flux measurements from the “blue” (gr) and “red” (iz) filters. The Hybrid model shows a reasonable balance between sensitivity and robustness, and achieves higher accuracy and flexibility compared to the LS morphological typing. With the Hybrid model, we provide classification scores for ∼3 × 10 9 LS sources, making this the largest ever machine learning catalog separating resolved and unresolved sources. The catalog has been incorporated into the real-time pipeline of the La Silla Schmidt Southern Survey (LS4), enabling the identification of extragalactic transients within the LS4 alert stream.
We report on the first experimental verification of theoretically predicted multiple bundles of counter-streaming plasma flows in the island-divertor scrape-off layer (SOL) of the stellarator Wendelstein 7-X. In the standard toroidal field direction (counter-clockwise when looking from the top) experiments, the overall structure of the SOL flows, such as flow directions, the number of flow bundles and the magnitude of the flow velocities, are consistent with numerical predictions obtained with EMC3-EIRENE. However, the modelling does not predict changes of the flow patterns with reversal of the magnetic field direction, which are experimentally observed. This indicates that additional relevant physics, such as particle drifts, will need to be incorporated into the numerical model to better describe the whole stellarator scrape-off layer behaviour.
Since the original detection of core-collapse supernova neutrinos in 1987, all large neutrino experiments seek to detect the neutrinos from the next nearby supernova. Among them, liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs) offer a unique sensitivity to the electron neutrino flux of a supernova. However, the low energy of these events (scale of MeVs), and the fact that all large (multi-tonne) LArTPCs operating at the moment are located near the Earth's surface, and are therefore subject to an intense cosmic ray flux, makes triggering on the supernova neutrinos very challenging. Instead, MicroBooNE has pioneered a novel approach for detecting supernova neutrinos based on a continuous readout stream and a delayed trigger generated by other neutrino detectors (the Supernova Early Warning System, or SNEWS). MicroBooNE's data is stored temporarily for a few days, awaiting a SNEWS alert to prompt the permanent recording of the data. In order to cope with the large data rates produced by the continuous readout of the TPC and the PMT systems of MicroBooNE, FPGA-based zero-suppression algorithms have been developed.
Here, we report the measurements of electrostatic field structures associated with an electrostatic shock formed in laser-produced counter-streaming plasmas with proton imaging. The thickness of the electrostatic structure is estimated from proton images with different proton kinetic energies from 4.7 MeV to 10.7 MeV. The width of the transition region is characterized by electron scale length in the laser-produced plasma, suggesting that the field structure is formed due to a collisionless electrostatic shock.