Plasma Physics
Non-ideal fluids are generally subject to the occurrence of non-isotropic pressure tensors, whose determination is fundamental in order to characterize their dynamical and thermodynamical properties. This requires the implementation of…
This paper outlines a variety of possible applications of the Vlasov equation and its generalization, i.e., the Klimontovich equation, in various areas of many-body physics. In particular, these equations are shown to be used in…
Particle-in-Cell (PIC) methods employ particle representations of unknown fields, but also employ continuum fields for other parts of the problem. Thus projection between particle and continuum bases is required. Moreover, we often need to…
In shockwave theory, the density, velocity and pressure jumps are derived from the conservation equations. Here, we address the physics of a weak shock the other way around. We first show that the density profile of a weak shockwave in a…
Steady plasma flows have been studied almost exclusively in systems with continuous symmetry or in open domains. In the absence of continuous symmetry, the lack of a conserved quantity makes the study of flows intrinsically challenging. In…
Plasma processing using a mixture of noble gas and oxygen is a technique that is currently being used to reduce field emission and multipacting in accelerating cavities. Plasma is created inside the cavity when the gas mixture is exposed to…
Gyrokinetic simulations conducted by Mazzi et al. reveal the suppression of turbulence in fusion plasmas through the destabilization of Toroidal Alfv\'en Eigenmodes (TAEs) by megaelectronvolt ions. Our analysis demonstrates that the…
A new open source tool for fluid simulation of multi-component plasmas is presented, based on a flexible software design that is applicable to scientific simulations in a wide range of fields. This design enables the same code to be…
The Vlasov equation is a nonlinear partial differential equation that provides a first-principles description of the dynamics of plasmas. Its linear limit is routinely used in plasma physics to investigate plasma oscillations and stability.…
We introduce a novel approach for the simultaneous optimization of plasma physics and coil engineering objectives using fixed-boundary equilibria that is computationally efficient and applicable to a broad range of vacuum and finite plasma…
The different forms of propagation of relativistic electron plasma wavepackets in terms of Airy functions are studied. It is shown that exact solutions can be constructed showing accelerated propagations along coordinates transverse to the…
Complete 3D simulations of the current quench phase of ITER disruptions are key to predict asymmetric forces acting into the ITER wall. We present for the first time such simulations for ITER mitigated disruptions at realistic Lundquist…
The MHD stabilization of ``rigid'' flute and ballooning modes with azimuthal number $m = 1$ in an axisymmetric mirror trap by means of a perfectly conducting lateral wall is studied both in the presence and in the absence of the end MHD…
The confinement of energetic particles (EPs) generated by fusion reactions and external heating methods is crucial for the performance of future fusion devices. However, EP transport can occur due to their interaction with electromagnetic…
I-mode is a natural ELMy-free regime with H-mode like improved energy confnement and L-mode like particle confnement, making it an attractive scenario for future tokamak based fusion reactors. A kind of low frequency oscillation was widely…
We study the modulational instability (MI) of a linearly polarized electromagnetic (EM) wave envelope in an intermediate regime of relativistic degenerate plasmas at a finite temperature $(T\neq0)$ where the thermal energy $(K_BT)$ and the…
Surface flashover across insulator in vacuum is a destructive plasma discharge which undermines the behaviors of a range of applications in electrical engineering, particle physics, space engineering, etc. This phenomenon is widely modeled…
Fully kinetic simulations are applied to the study of 2D anti-parallel reconnection, elucidating the dynamics by which the electron fluid maintains force balance within both the electron diffusion region (EDR) and the ion diffusion region…
Current understanding of the kinetic-scale turbulence in weakly-collisional plasmas still remains elusive. We employ a general framework in which the turbulent energy transfer is envisioned as a scale-to-scale Langevin process. Fluctuations…
Hybrid-VPIC is an extension of the open-source high-performance particle-in-cell (PIC) code VPIC incorporating hybrid kinetic ion/fluid electron solvers. This paper describes the models that are available in the code and gives an overview…