Observations of a Field-Aligned Ion/Ion-Beam Instability in a Magnetized Laboratory Plasma
Abstract
Collisionless coupling between super Alfv\'{e}nic ions and an ambient plasma parallel to a background magnetic field is mediated by a set of electromagnetic ion/ion-beam instabilities including the resonant right hand instability (RHI). To study this coupling and its role in parallel shock formation, a new experimental configuration at the University of California, Los Angeles utilizes high-energy and high-repetition-rate lasers to create a super-Alfv\'{e}nic field-aligned debris plasma within an ambient plasma in the Large Plasma Device (LAPD). We used a time-resolved fluorescence monochromator and an array of Langmuir probes to characterize the laser plasma velocity distribution and density. The debris ions were observed to be sufficiently super-Alfv\'{e}nic and dense to excite the RHI. Measurements with magnetic flux probes exhibited a right-hand circularly polarized frequency chirp consistent with the excitation of the RHI near the laser target. We compared measurements to 2D hybrid simulations of the experiment.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1711.10648,
title = {Observations of a Field-Aligned Ion/Ion-Beam Instability in a Magnetized Laboratory Plasma},
author = {P. V. Heuer and M. S. Weidl and R. S. Dorst and D. B. Schaeffer and A. S. Bondarenko and S. K. P. Tripathi and B. Van Compernolle and S. Vincena and C. G. Constantin and C. Niemann and D. Winske},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.10648},
year = {2018}
}