Structure formation by electrostatic interactions in strongly coupled medium.

The formation of correlated structures is of importance in many diverse contexts such as strongly coupled plasmas, soft matter, and even biological mediums. In all these contexts the dynamics are mainly governed by electrostatic interactions and result in the formation of a variety of structures. In this study, the process of formation of structures is investigated with the help of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations in two and three dimensions. The overall medium has been modeled with an equal number of positive and negatively charged particles interacting via long-range pair Coulomb potential. A repulsive short-range Lennard-Jones (LJ) potential is added to take care of the blowing up of attractive Coulomb interaction between unlike charges. In the strongly coupled regime, a variety of classical bound states form. However, complete crystallization of the system, as typically observed in the context of one-component strongly coupled plasmas, does not occur. The influence of localized perturbation in the system has also been studied. The formation of a crystalline pattern of shielding clouds around this disturbance is observed. The spatial properties of the shielding structure have been analyzed using the radial distribution function and Voronoi diagram. The process of accumulation of oppositely charged particles around the disturbance triggers a lot of dynamic activity in the bulk of the medium. As a result of this, close encounters are possible even between those particles/clusters which were initially and/or at some point of time widely separated. This leads to the formation of a larger number of bigger clusters. There are, however, also instances when bound pairs break up and the electrons from bound pairs contribute to the shielding cloud, whereas ions bounce back into the bulk. A detailed discussion of these features has been provided in the manuscript.

Chaotic dynamics of small-sized charged Yukawa dust clusters.

In a recent work [Maity et al., Phys. Rev. E 102(2), 023213 (2020)] the equilibrium of a cluster of charged dust particles mutually interacting with screened Coulomb force and radially confined by an externally applied electric field in a two-dimensional configuration was studied. It was shown that the particles arranged themselves on discrete radial rings forming a lattice structure. In some cases with a specific number of particles, no static equilibrium was observed. Instead, angular rotation of particles positioned at various rings was observed. In a two-ringed structure, it was shown that the direction of rotation of the particles positioned in different rings was opposite. The direction of rotation was also observed to change apparently at random time intervals. A detailed characterization of the dynamics of small-sized Yukawa clusters, with a varying number of particles and different strengths of the confining force, has been carried out. The correlation dimension and the largest Lyapunov index for the dynamical state have been evaluated to demonstrate that the dynamics is chaotic. This is interesting considering that the charged microparticles have many applications in a variety of industrial processes.

Mode conversion and laser energy absorption by plasma under an inhomogeneous external magnetic field.

The interaction of a high-frequency laser with plasma in the presence of an inhomogeneous external magnetic field has been studied here with the help of particle-in-cell simulations. It has been shown that the laser enters the plasma as an extraordinary wave (X-wave), where the electric field of the wave oscillates perpendicular to both the external magnetic field and propagation direction and as it travels through the plasma, its dispersion property changes due to the inhomogeneity of the externally applied magnetic field. Our study shows that the X-wave's electromagnetic energy is converted to an electrostatic mode as it encounters the upper-hybrid (UH) resonance layer. In the later stage of the evolution, this electrostatic wave breaks and converts its energy to electron kinetic energy. Our study reveals two additional processes involved in decay of the electrostatic mode at the UH resonance layer. We have shown that the energy of the electrostatic mode at the upper-hybrid resonance layer also converts to a low-frequency lower-hybrid mode and high-frequency electromagnetic harmonic radiations. The dependence of energy conversion processes on the gradient of the external magnetic field has also been studied and analyzed.

Electromagnetic wave transparency of X mode in strongly magnetized plasma.

An electromagnetic (EM) pulse falling on a plasma medium from vacuum can either reflect, get absorbed or propagate inside the plasma depending on whether it is overdense or underdense. In a magnetized plasma, however, there are usually several pass and stop bands for the EM wave depending on the orientation of the magnetic field with respect to the propagation direction. The EM wave while propagating in a plasma can also excite electrostatic disturbances in the plasma. In this work Particle-In-Cell simulations have been carried out to illustrate the complete transparency of the EM wave propagation inside a strongly magnetized plasma. The external magnetic field is chosen to be perpendicular to both the wave propagation direction and the electric field of the EM wave, which is the X mode configuration. Despite the presence of charged electron and ion species the plasma medium behaves like a vacuum. The observation is understood with the help of particle drifts. It is shown that though the two particle species move under the influence of EM fields their motion does not lead to any charge or current source to alter the dispersion relation of the EM wave propagating in the medium. Furthermore, it is also shown that the stop band for EM wave in this regime shrinks to a zero width as both the resonance and cut-off points approach each other. Thus, transparency to the EM radiation in such a strongly magnetized case appears to be a norm.

Dynamical states in two-dimensional charged dust particle clusters in plasma medium.

The formation of dynamical states for a collection of dust particles in two dimensions is shown using molecular dynamics simulations. The charged dust particles interact with each other with a Yukawa pair potential mimicking the screening due to plasma. An external radial confining force has also been applied to the dust particles to keep them radially confined. When the particle number is low (say, a few), they get arranged on the radial locations corresponding to multiple rings or shells. For specific numbers, such an arrangement of particles is stationary. However, for several cases, the cluster of dust particles relaxes to a state for which the dust particles on rings display intershell rotation. For a larger number of dust particles (a few hundred, for instance), an equilibrium state with a coherent rigid body displaying angular oscillation of the entire cluster is observed. A detailed characterization of the formation of these states in terms of particle number, coupling parameter, etc., is provided.

Spiral waves in driven strongly coupled Yukawa systems.

Spiral wave formations are ubiquitous in nature. In the present paper, the excitation of spiral waves in the context of driven two-dimensional dusty plasma (Yukawa system) has been demonstrated at particle level using molecular-dynamics simulations. The interaction amidst dust particles is modeled by the Yukawa potential to take account of the shielding of dust charges by the lighter electron and ion species. The spatiotemporal evolution of these spiral waves has been characterized as a function of the frequency and amplitude of the driving force and dust neutral collisions. The effect of strong coupling has been studied, which shows that the excited spiral wave structures get clearer as the medium gets more strongly coupled. The radial propagation speed of the spiral wave is observed to remain unaltered with the coupling parameter. However, it is found to depend on the screening parameter of the dust medium and decreases when it is increased. In the crystalline phase (with screening parameter κ>0.58), the spiral wavefronts are shown to be hexagonal in shape. This shows that the radial propagation speed depends on the interparticle spacing.

Magnetic turbulence in a table-top laser-plasma relevant to astrophysical scenarios.

Turbulent magnetic fields abound in nature, pervading astrophysical, solar, terrestrial and laboratory plasmas. Understanding the ubiquity of magnetic turbulence and its role in the universe is an outstanding scientific challenge. Here, we report on the transition of magnetic turbulence from an initially electron-driven regime to one dominated by ion-magnetization in a laboratory plasma produced by an intense, table-top laser. Our observations at the magnetized ion scale of the saturated turbulent spectrum bear a striking resemblance with spacecraft measurements of the solar wind magnetic-field spectrum, including the emergence of a spectral kink. Despite originating from diverse energy injection sources (namely, electrons in the laboratory experiment and ion free-energy sources in the solar wind), the turbulent spectra exhibit remarkable parallels. This demonstrates the independence of turbulent spectral properties from the driving source of the turbulence and highlights the potential of small-scale, table-top laboratory experiments for investigating turbulence in astrophysical environments.

Direct observation of turbulent magnetic fields in hot, dense laser produced plasmas.

Turbulence in fluids is a ubiquitous, fascinating, and complex natural phenomenon that is not yet fully understood. Unraveling turbulence in high density, high temperature plasmas is an even bigger challenge because of the importance of electromagnetic forces and the typically violent environments. Fascinating and novel behavior of hot dense matter has so far been only indirectly inferred because of the enormous difficulties of making observations on such matter. Here, we present direct evidence of turbulence in giant magnetic fields created in an overdense, hot plasma by relativistic intensity (10(18) W/cm(2)) femtosecond laser pulses. We have obtained magneto-optic polarigrams at femtosecond time intervals, simultaneously with micrometer spatial resolution. The spatial profiles of the magnetic field show randomness and their k spectra exhibit a power law along with certain well defined peaks at scales shorter than skin depth. Detailed two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations delineate the underlying interaction between forward currents of relativistic energy "hot" electrons created by the laser pulse and "cold" return currents of thermal electrons induced in the target. Our results are not only fundamentally interesting but should also arouse interest on the role of magnetic turbulence induced resistivity in the context of fast ignition of laser fusion, and the possibility of experimentally simulating such structures with respect to the sun and other stellar environments.

Phase mixing of relativistically intense waves in a cold homogeneous plasma.

We report on spatiotemporal evolution of relativistically intense longitudinal electron plasma waves in a cold homogeneous plasma, using the physically appealing Dawson sheet model. Calculations presented here in the weakly relativistic limit clearly show that under very general initial conditions, a relativistic wave will always phase mix and eventually break at arbitrarily low amplitudes, in a time scale omegapetaumix approximately {3/64(omegape2delta3/c2k2)|Deltak/k|(|1+Deltak/k|)](1+1|1+Deltak/k|)}(-1). We have verified this scaling with respect to amplitude of perturbation delta and width of the spectrum (Deltakk) using numerical simulations. This result may be of relevance to ultrashort, ultraintense laser pulse-plasma interaction experiments where relativistically intense waves are excited.

Continuum self-organized-criticality model of turbulent heat transport in tokamaks.

A simple generic one-dimensional continuum model of driven dissipative systems is proposed to explain self-organized bursty heat transport in tokamaks. Extensive numerical simulations of this model reproduce many features of present day tokamaks such as submarginal temperature profiles, intermittent transport events, 1/f scaling of the frequency spectra, propagating fronts, etc. This model utilizes a minimal set of phenomenological parameters, which may be determined from experiments and/or simulations. Analytical and physical understanding of the observed features has also been attempted.