Development of plasma sources for Dipole Research EXperiment (DREX)

Abstract

Dipole Research EXperiment (DREX) is a new terrella device as part of the Space Plasma Environment Research Facility (SPERF) for laboratory studies of space physics relevant to the inner magnetospheric plasmas. Adequate plasma sources are very important for DREX to achieve its scientific goals. According to different research requirements, there are two density regimes for DREX. The low density regime will be achieved by an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) system for the 'whistler/chorus' wave investigation, while the high density regime will be achieved by biased cold cathode discharge for the desired 'Alfvén' wave study. The parameters of 'whistler/chorus' waves and 'Alfvén' waves are determined by the scaling law between space and laboratory plasmas in the current device. In this paper, the initial design of these two plasma sources for DREX is described. Focus is placed on the chosen frequency and operation mode of the ECR system which will produce relatively low density 'artificial radiation belt' plasmas and the seed electrons, followed by the design of biased cold cathode discharge to generate plasma with high density.

Conceptual design of the tail research experiment at the Space Plasma Environment Research Facility (SPERF-TREX)

“…SPERF is built to provide international platforms of a multifunction scientific research facility for space and plasma physics, including the AREX to study asymmetric reconnection dynamics relevant to coupling between interplanetary and magnetospheric plasmas [32,35,37,38], and DREX to study the transportation characteristics of energetic particles in dipole-like magnetic field configurations [33,34,[36][37][38][39][40]. Meanwhile, TREX mainly investigates: (i) 3D magnetic reconnection of the magnetosphere plasmas, especially in the magnetotail region; (ii) propagation of BBFs in the magnetotail and excitation of hydromagnetic waves; (iii) formation and propagation processes of dipolarization fronts and related spatial environmental effects; and (iv) the injection process of energetic particles into the radiation belt.…”

“…Therefore, ground laboratories have been designed and built to simulate relevant space plasma processes by making use of scaling relations between experiments and the terrestrial space to realize controllable, repeatable, and global simultaneous measurements [30,31]. With reference to the basic parameters of geospace physics, the Space Plasma Environment Research Facility (SPERF) was proposed and designed for the study of magnetosphere processes, such as plasma wave generation and propagation, particle acceleration and transport, magnetic field reconfigurations by three-dimensional magnetic reconnection and dipolarization [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40].…”

“…The SPERF is a key component of the Space Environment Simulation Research Infrastructure (SESRI), a major national science and technology infrastructure for fundamental research. It consists of three research sections: the Asymmetric Reconnection EXperiment (AREX) [32,35,37,38], the Dipole Research EXperiment (DREX) [33,34,[36][37][38][39][40], and the Tail Research EXperiment (TREX) [38], for simulat-ing magnetopause, radiation belt, and magnetotail regions, respectively.…”

Design of HCN laser based interferometer on the Space Plasma Environment Research Facility (SPERF)

“…It's very important that the device has the capability of monitoring and characterizing the plasma parameters and profiles for scientific experiments. In this work, we are focus on the diagnosis of plasma density, which is produced by electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) for low density region of about 10 11 -10 12 cm −3 and by bias cold cathode discharge for high density region of about 10 12 -10 13 cm −3 [13].…”

Excitation of chorus-like waves by temperature anisotropy in dipole research experiment (DREX): A numerical study

“…In CTX experiments, radial and azimuthal mode structures of plasma waves were excited either by hot electron instabilities or by a broad-band antenna, while a population of energetic electrons was created using electron cyclotron resonance heating. [25] An experimental device specially designed for simulating radiation belt physics, dipole research experiment (DREX), is under construction at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) in China, [26][27][28] as an important component of China major state facility for fundamental research, space environment simulation research infrastructure (SESRI). It is designed to simulate the basic physical processes in the near-earth space environment by scaling plasmas in laboratory with that in space, and aims to study wave-particle interaction of energetic particles in the radiation-belt-like plasmas.…”