English

A technique for plasma velocity-space cross-correlation

Plasma Physics 2018-08-13 v1

Abstract

An advance in experimental plasma diagnostics is presented and used to make the first measurement of a plasma velocity-space cross-correlation matrix. The velocity space correlation function can detect collective fluctuations of plasmas through a localized measurement. An empirical decomposition, singular value decomposition, is applied to this Hermitian matrix in order to obtain the plasma fluctuation eigenmode structure on the ion distribution function. A basic theory is introduced and compared to the modes obtained by the experiment. A full characterization of these modes is left for future work, but an outline of this endeavor is provided. Finally, the requirements for this experimental technique in other plasma regimes are discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.03396,
  title  = {A technique for plasma velocity-space cross-correlation},
  author = {Sean Mattingly and Fred Skiff},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.03396},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

Version submitted to AIP POP that was accepted

R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:29:34.637Z