Direct evidence of nonstationary collisionless shocks in space plasmas.

Collisionless shocks are ubiquitous throughout the universe: around stars, supernova remnants, active galactic nuclei, binary systems, comets, and planets. Key information is carried by electromagnetic emissions from particles accelerated by high Mach number collisionless shocks. These shocks are intrinsically nonstationary, and the characteristic physical scales responsible for particle acceleration remain unknown. Quantifying these scales is crucial, as it affects the fundamental process of redistributing upstream plasma kinetic energy into other degrees of freedom-particularly electron thermalization. Direct in situ measurements of nonstationary shock dynamics have not been reported. Thus, the model that best describes this process has remained unknown. Here, we present direct evidence demonstrating that the transition to nonstationarity is associated with electron-scale field structures inside the shock ramp.

How electron two-stream instability drives cyclic Langmuir collapse and continuous coherent emission.

Continuous plasma coherent emission is maintained by repetitive Langmuir collapse driven by the nonlinear evolution of a strong electron two-stream instability. The Langmuir waves are modulated by solitary waves in the linear stage and electrostatic whistler waves in the nonlinear stage. Modulational instability leads to Langmuir collapse and electron heating that fills in cavitons. The high pressure is released via excitation of a short-wavelength ion acoustic mode that is damped by electrons and reexcites small-scale Langmuir waves; this process closes a feedback loop that maintains the continuous coherent emission.

Metamaterials: electromagnetic enhancement at zero-index transition.

Resonant enhancement of electromagnetic waves propagating at oblique incidence in metamaterials, with dielectric permittivity and magnetic permeability linearly changing from positive to negative values, has been predicted and theoretically studied. This effect occurs for both TE and TM polarizations near the point where a refractive index changes its sign. Our model elucidates the unique features of the resonant enhancement in "positive-to-negative transition" metamaterials for a broad frequency range from microwaves to optics.

Chaotic jets with multifractal space-time random walk.

The problem of normal and anomalous diffusion is examined for the four-dimensional (4-D) map that arises from the problem of particle motion in a constant magnetic field and electrostatic wave packet. This 4-D map consists of two coupled 2-D maps: a standard map and a web map. The case of a weak chaos is considered. It is shown that due to the finite observation time, the particle diffusion possesses strong nonhomogeneous properties. Existence of long-living bundles of orbits with coherent propagation property is checked. These bundles are named "chaotic jets." The same name is used for a part of the trajectory if this part corresponds to long-living trapping or flight. The existence of chaotic jets depends on the topological properties of the phase space and influences the asymptotic law of transport. The particle transport can be considered as a random walk in the multifractal space-time that is produced by flights and trappings of a test particle in some area of its phase space. Levy random walk theory and its generalization for the multifractal space-time situation is considered and asymptotic laws for displacements are derived. Different intermediate asymptotics are discussed.