Longitudinal sound waves in a collisionless, quasineutral plasma

The time evolution of slow sound waves in a homogeneous, collisionless and quasineutral plasma, in particular their Landau damping, is investigated using the kinetic-magnetohydrodynamics formulation of Ramos (J. Plasma Phys. vol. 81, 2015 p. 905810325; vol. 82, 2016 p. 905820607). In this approach, the electric field is eliminated from a closed, hybrid fluid-kinetic system that ensures automatically the fulfilment of the charge neutrality condition. Considering the time dependence of a spatial-Fourier-mode linear perturbation with wavevector parallel to the equilibrium magnetic field, this can be cast as a second-order self-adjoint problem with a continuum spectrum of real and positive squared frequencies. Therefore, a conventional resolution of the identity with a continuum basis of singular normal modes is guaranteed, which simplifies significantly a Van Kampen-like treatment of the Landau damping. The explicit form of such singular normal modes is obtained, along with their orthogonality relations. These are used to derive the damped time evolution of the fluid moments of solutions of initial-value problems, for the most general kinds of initial conditions. The non-zero parallel electric field is not used explicitly in this analysis, but it is calculated from any given solution after the later has been obtained.

Particle simulation of acceleration of quasineutral plasma blocks by short laser pulses

Acceleration of quasineutral plasma blocks by ponderomotive force induced by normally incident short laser pulse is studied here via 1D3V Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations. Very high current densities 109–1011Acm−2of accelerated ions are observed for maximum laser intensities in the range 1016–1018Wcm−2on solid hydrogen target. Ion acceleration process is traced here via evolution of ion density and of ion velocity distribution. Basic parameters of the accelerated plasma blocks are determined from temporally integrated ion distributions. Our results provide more detailed information than the previous analytical estimates (Hora, 2003) and the two-fluid 1D hydrodynamic simulations (Glowaczet al., 2004).

Spacecraft potential during an active experiment: a comparison of experimental results with a simple model

The Active Plasma Experiment (APEX) used intensive electron beam and/or a release of the low-energy Xenon plasma to study dynamic processes in the magnetosphere and upper ionosphere. It was shown by Prech et al. (1999) that the release of the Xe plasma increases the spacecraft potential when the ambient plasma density is low, but decreases it when the density is high enough. In the present paper, a simple computer model of the dust particle charging has been adapted for a calculation of the potential difference between a planar probe and a spherical satellite moving in the ionospheric plasma. The influence of a quasineutral plasma emission on the measured spacecraft potential difference is discussed and the calculated results are compared with experimental data from the APEX project.Key words. Ionosphere (active experiments)

Asymptotic theory of a collision-dominated space-charge sheath with a velocity-dependent ion mobility

The method of matched asymptotic approximations is used to examine an ordering of the physical quantities in a collisional plasma–collisional sheath model that has not been previously explored, namely in the constant ion mean free path model with high electric field. The asymptotic theory for a collision- dominated space-charge sheath at a negative surface is developed for the case when the ions interact with neutral particles as rigid spheres while the electric field is high both in the sheath and in the quasineutral plasma. The ion mobility is inversely proportional to the square root of the electric field in such a case. The ratio λD/L of the Debye length at the center of the quasineutral plasma to a characteristic dimension of the plasma is considered as a small asymptotic parameter. The general structure of the asymptotic solution obtained is similar to that in the case of low electric field (or in the framework of the model of constant collision frequency), considered by previous workers; however, the scalings are different. In particular, the thickness of the sheath is found to have the order λ4/5DL1/5, while the respective order in the case of low electric field is λ2/3DL1/3.