RESUMEN
This Letter describes a new parametric instability mechanism caused by a distribution f_{T} of particles trapped in the potential wells of a wave train. The mechanism explains a nonlinear instability in Trivelpiece-Gould (TG) waves, and it could also be a destabilizing factor in a range of nearly collisionless nonlinear plasma waves. The theory is compared to particle in cell simulations of TG waves.
RESUMEN
Plasma loss due to apparatus asymmetries is a ubiquitous phenomenon in magnetic plasma confinement. When the plasma equilibrium has locally trapped particle populations partitioned by a separatrix from one another and from passing particles, the asymmetry transport is enhanced. The trapped and passing particle populations react differently to the asymmetries, leading to the standard 1/ν and sqrt[ν] transport regimes of superbanana orbit theory as particles collisionally scatter from one orbit type to another. However, when the separatrix is itself asymmetric, particles can collisionlessly transit from trapped to passing and back, leading to enhanced transport.
RESUMEN
Variations in magnetic or electrostatic confinement fields give rise to trapping separatrices, and neoclassical transport theory analyzes effects from collision-induced separatrix crossings. Experiments on pure electron plasmas now quantitatively characterize a broad range of transport and wave damping effects due to "chaotic" separatrix crossings, which occur due to equilibrium plasma rotation across θ-ruffled separatrices, and due to wave-induced separatrix fluctuations.
RESUMEN
Two-dimensional crystals of ions stored in Penning traps are a leading platform for quantum simulation and sensing experiments. For small amplitudes, the out-of-plane motion of such crystals can be described by a discrete set of normal modes called the drumhead modes, which can be used to implement a range of quantum information protocols. However, experimental observations of crystals with Doppler-cooled and even near-ground-state-cooled drumhead modes reveal an unresolved drumhead-mode spectrum. In this work, we establish in-plane thermal fluctuations in ion positions as a major contributor to the broadening of the drumhead-mode spectrum. In the process, we demonstrate how the confining magnetic field leads to unconventional in-plane normal modes, whose average potential and kinetic energies are not equal. This property, in turn, has implications for the sampling procedure required to choose the in-plane initial conditions for molecular-dynamics simulations. For current operating conditions of the NIST Penning trap, our study suggests that the two-dimensional crystals produced in this trap undergo in-plane potential-energy fluctuations of the order of 10mK. Our study therefore motivates the need for designing improved techniques to cool the in-plane degrees of freedom.
RESUMEN
An analogy is uncovered between the nuclear reaction rate in a dense neutral plasma and the energy equipartition rate in a strongly magnetized non-neutral plasma. In strong magnetic fields, cyclotron energy, like nuclear energy, is released only through rare close collisions between charges. The probability of such collisions is enhanced by plasma screening effects, just as in nuclear reactions. Enhancements of up to 10(10) are measured in simulations of cyclotron energy equipartition and are compared to the theory of screened nuclear reactions.
RESUMEN
A novel type of guiding-center drift ion is described. These ions occur only in strong magnetic fields. They consist of a neutral atom to which either an electron or positron is weakly bound, at a sufficiently large radius that it may be described by ExB drift dynamics. Such ions may occur naturally in astrophysical plasmas and may have been formed in recent antihydrogen experiments, where their presence would provide proof that deeply bound H atoms are being created.