The temperature gradient effect on the stability of a plasma in the “maximum-J configuration” is studied and two possible instabilities due to temperature gradient are found in the axisymmetric system.
The stability of the ring current belt against low‐frequency electrostatic perturbations is analyzed, including the effect of the finite electric field along the magnetic lines of force. We derive the conditions for two purely growing instabilities, the interchange and the drift mode. For an isothermal plasma in a dipole field, the critical density gradients for the interchange and the drift mode are d ln n/d ln r = −7.5 and −1.5, respectively. Due to the parallel electric field associated with the instabilities, their main consequence is to precipitate charged particles into the ionosphere, thereby relaxing the pressure gradient of the ring current.
We study theoretically and numerically the acceleration of protons by a combination of laser radiation pressure acceleration and Coulomb repulsion of carbon ions in a multi-ion thin foil made of carbon and hydrogen. The carbon layer helps to delay the proton layer from disruption due to the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, to maintain the quasi-monoenergetic proton layer and to accelerate it by the electron-shielded Coulomb repulsion for much longer duration than the acceleration time using single-ion hydrogen foils. Particle-in-cell simulations with a normalized peak laser amplitude of a 0 = 5 show a resulting quasimonoenergetic proton energy of about 70 MeV with the foil made of 90% carbon and 10% hydrogen, in contrast to 10 MeV using a single-ion hydrogen foil.An analytical model is presented to explain quantitatively the proton energy evolution; this model is in agreement with the simulation results. The energy dependence of the quasi-monoenergetic proton beam on the concentration of carbon and hydrogen is also studied.
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An intense ultrafast laser pulse propagating through a plasma undergoes self-focusing and self-phase-modulation as a result of relativistic mass nonlinearity. The inclusion of a quartic (r4) term in the expansion of the eikonal in the radial coordinate r allows the modification of the shape of the radial intensity profile. The front of the pulse, under the combined effects of time-dependent self-focusing and frequency downshifting, acquires a severely distorted temporal shape. The radial profile for I(lambda)2(mu) < 2.8 x 1018 W/cm2, where I is the axial laser intensity and lambda(mu), is the laser wavelength in micrometers, is transformed from a Gaussian to a super-Gaussian because of the faster convergence of the marginal rays than the paraxial rays. In the opposite case of I(lambda)(2)(mu) > 2.8 x 10(18) W/cm2 when nonlinear plasma permittivity approaches saturation, the radial profile in the axial region becomes broader than the Gaussian.
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