Experimental Demonstration of Collisionless Particle Acceleration Mechanisms and Entrainment of Ambient Plasma Ions by a Rapidly Expanding Diamagnetic Cavity.

Abstract:

The collisionless coupling of an expanding diamagnetic cavity to a magnetized, ambient plasma is studied in a laboratory environment using a laser-produced plasma (LPP). The seed LPP rapidly expands with velocities up to the background Alfvén speed, v_exp ≤ v_A. The boundary layer of the expansion is characterized with in situ diagnostics as a cylindrical version of the Ferraro-Rosenbluth current sheath. Maintenance of quasi-neutrality in this sheath forms an electric field opposing the cross-field expansion which simultaneously drives the electron current that forms the diamagnetic cavity, decelerates the LPP ions to stagnation, and accelerates ambient ions inward. The field topology across the background magnetic field is identical to that described by Bernhardt, et al. [1] for the AMPTE magnetotail barium releases. The boundary along the magnetic field, however, is shown to contain an electric field with E·B ≠ 0, which is absent in simple fluid models of diamagnetic cavities. The electric fields at this boundary help explain previous observations in the experiment of the ejection of suprathermal electrons and return currents that generated whistler- and Alfvén-wave radiation in the ambient plasma. Magnetic loops and an emissive probe measure the magnetic field and electrostatic potential along 3 dimensions while a laser-induced fluorescence scheme measures the cross-field flow of the ambient argon ions as they penetrate the diamagnetic cavity. Particle orbit solvers employing the measured fields corroborate the flow diagnostic and predict strong outflows of ambient ions with higher charge to mass ratios after diamagnetic cavity collapse. This experiment was conducted in the Large Plasma Device at the Basic Plasma Science Facility and funded by grants from the US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

[1] P.A. Bernhardt, R.A. Roussel-Dupre, M.B. Pongratz, J. Geophys. Res. 92, 57777 (1987).