No Arabic abstract
This paper presents the basic concept of various plasma diagnostics used for the study of plasma characteristics in different plasma experiments ranging from low temperature to high energy density plasma.
Computing is not understanding. This is exemplified by the multiple and discordant interpretations of Landau damping still present after seventy years. For long deemed impossible, the mechanical N-body description of this damping, not only enables its rigorous and simple calculation, but makes unequivocal and intuitive its interpretation as the synchronization of almost resonant passing particles. This synchronization justifies mechanically why a single formula applies to both Landau growth and damping. As to the electrostatic potential, the phase mixing of many beam modes produces Landau damping, but it is unexpectedly essential for Landau growth too. Moreover, collisions play an essential role in collisionless plasmas. In particular, Debye shielding results from a cooperative dynamical self-organization process, where collisional deflections due to a given electron diminish the apparent number of charges about it. The finite value of exponentiation rates due to collisions is crucial for the equivalent of the van Kampen phase mixing to occur in the N-body system. The N-body approach incorporates spontaneous emission naturally, whose compound effect with Landau damping drives a thermalization of Langmuir waves. ONeils damping with trapping typical of initially large enough Langmuir waves results from a phase transition. As to collisional transport, there is a smooth connection between impact parameters where the two-body Rutherford picture is correct, and those where a collective description is mandatory. The N-body approach reveals two important features of the Vlasovian limit: it is singular and it corresponds to a renormalized description of the actual N-body dynamics.
Production of antihydrogen atoms by mixing antiprotons with a cold, confined, positron plasma depends critically on parameters such as the plasma density and temperature. We discuss non-destructive measurements, based on a novel, real-time analysis of excited, low-order plasma modes, that provide comprehensive characterization of the positron plasma in the ATHENA antihydrogen apparatus. The plasma length, radius, density, and total particle number are obtained. Measurement and control of plasma temperature variations, and the application to antihydrogen production experiments are discussed.
We demonstrate a novel detection method for the cyclotron resonance frequency of an electron plasma in a Penning-Malmberg trap. With this technique, the electron plasma is used as an in situ diagnostic tool for measurement of the static magnetic field and the microwave electric field in the trap. The cyclotron motion of the electron plasma is excited by microwave radiation and the temperature change of the plasma is measured non-destructively by monitoring the plasmas quadrupole mode frequency. The spatially-resolved microwave electric field strength can be inferred from the plasma temperature change and the magnetic field is found through the cyclotron resonance frequency. These measurements were used extensively in the recently reported demonstration of resonant quantum interactions with antihydrogen.
Plasma wakefield acceleration is the most promising acceleration technique for compact and cheap accelerators, thanks to the high accelerating gradients achievable. Nevertheless, this approach still suffers of shot-to-shot instabilities, mostly related to experimental parameters fluctuations. Therefore, the use of single shot diagnostics is needed to properly understand the acceleration mechanism. In this work, we present two diagnostics to probe electron beams from laser-plasma interactions, one relying on Electro Optical Sampling (EOS) for laser-solid matter interactions, the other one based on Optical Transition Radiation (OTR) for single shot measurements of the transverse emittance of plasma accelerated electron beams, both developed at the SPARC_LAB Test Facility.
Debye shielding, collisional transport, Landau damping of Langmuir waves, and spontaneous emission of these waves are introduced, in typical plasma physics textbooks, in different chapters. This paper provides a compact unified introduction to these phenomena without appealing to fluid or kinetic models, but by using Newtons second law for a system of $N$ electrons in a periodic box with a neutralizing ionic background. A rigorous equation is derived for the electrostatic potential. Its linearization and a first smoothing reveal this potential to be the sum of the shielded Coulomb potentials of the individual particles. Smoothing this sum yields the classical Vlasovian expression including initial conditions in Landau contour calculations of Langmuir wave growth or damping. The theory is extended to accommodate a correct description of trapping or chaos due to Langmuir waves. In the linear regime, the amplitude of such a wave is found to be ruled by Landau growth or damping and by spontaneous emission. Using the shielded potential, the collisional diffusion coefficient is computed for the first time by a convergent expression including the correct calculation of deflections for all impact parameters. Shielding and collisional transport are found to be two related aspects of the repulsive deflections of electrons.