| 1. |
- Dieckmann, Mark E, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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Aspects of self-similar current distributions resulting from the plasma filamentation instability
- 2007
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Ingår i: New Journal of Physics. - : IOP Publishing. - 1367-2630. ; 9, s. 10-1-10-22
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Colliding plasmas can form current filaments that are magnetically confined and interact through electromagnetic fields during the nonlinear evolution of this filamentation instability. A nonrelativistic and a relativistic electron flow are examined. Two-dimensional (2D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations evolve the instability in a plane orthogonal to the flow vector and confirm that the current filaments move, merge through magnetic reconnection and evolve into current sheets and large flux tubes. The current filaments overlap over limited spatial intervals. Electrons accelerate in the overlap region and their final energy distribution decreases faster than exponential. The spatial power spectrum of the filaments in the flow-aligned current component can be approximated by a power-law during the linear growth phase. This may reflect a phase transition. The power spectrum of the current component perpendicular to the flow direction shows a power-law also during the nonlinear phase, possibly due to preferential attachment. The power-law distributed power spectra evidence self-similarity over a limited scale size and the wavenumber of the maximum of the spatial power spectrum of the filament distribution decreases linearly in time. Power-law correlations of velocity fields, which could be connected to the current filaments, may imply super-diffusion.
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| 2. |
- Dieckmann, Mark E, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
-
Aspects of self-similarity of the filamentation instability
- 2007
-
Ingår i: 34th European Physical Society Conference on Plasma Physics,2007. - Warsaw : European Physical Society. ; , s. P2.080-
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The filamentation instability (FI) is an aperiodically growing instability driven by counterpropagating electron beams. Its ability to generate magnetic fields is important for the energetic plasmas in gamma ray burst jets and inertial confinement fusion plasmas. The FI has been examined both analytically and with particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. We perform PIC simulations and follow the FI through its nonlinear saturation. The power spectrum of the flow-aligned current component is self-similar during the linear phase. We show that the perpendicular current distribution is self-similar during the nonlinear evolution and that the filament size increases linearly with time. We demonstrate that, at least for warm plasmas, the current filaments can't be described by simple flux tubes. Instead, the filaments merge by magnetic reconnection to form larger, partially overlapping current sheets. In the filament overlap region the electrons are accelerated.
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