Plasma Physics
A fixed boundary stellarator equilibrium capable of producing 3 GW of fusion power (1 GW-electric) is presented as the design basis for the GIGA fusion power plant being developed by Gauss Fusion GmbH. The stellarator concept provides a…
Laser-driven proton acceleration from nanostructured solid targets has been extensively studied, yet its performance under realistic temporal contrast conditions at petawatt-class facilities remains an open question. We present an…
Doppler backscattering (DBS) measures electron density fluctuations. The measured wavenumber is typically varied by changing the probe beam poloidal launch angle. As most DBS systems are unable to steer during a shot, the shot is repeated…
We present a new electromagnetic plasma simulation model with full-kinetic ions and drift-kinetic electrons. This model (termed as FIDES) solves the electric field using the implicit perpendicular Ohm's law and a novel implicit parallel…
Magnetic fields generated by the Rayleigh-Taylor instability were measured in laser-accelerated planar foils using ultrafast proton radiography. Thin plastic foils were irradiated with $\sim$4-kJ, 2.5-ns laser pulses focused to an intensity…
The influence of ferritic steel on low-shear stellarator/heliotron magnetic configurations is investigated for the Heliotron J device using a point dipole magnetisation model. By numerically evaluating ferritic steel plates assumed at…
An axisymmetric, quasineutral three-fluid model is proposed to study the plasma expansion in a magnetic nozzle under the presence of neutrals coming either from the plasma source or as an homogeneous background. As a difference with other…
Magnetic fields generated by the nonlinear Rayleigh-Taylor growth of laser-seeded three-dimensional broadband perturbations were measured in laser-accelerated planar targets using ultrafast proton radiography. The experimental data show…
In electron-only collisionless magnetic reconnection (MR), a regime of growing importance in turbulent space plasmas, electrons develop strongly non-Maxwellian distributions that invalidate conventional fluid closures based on assumptions…
Efficient terahertz (THz) generation with high field amplitude and pulse energy is studied through the interaction of a single-color long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) laser pulse with gaseous targets. Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations are…
Magnetic fields generated by the Rayleigh-Taylor instability were measured in laser-accelerated planar foils using ultrafast proton radiography. Thin plastic foils were irradiated with $\sim$4-kJ, 2.5-ns laser pulses focused to an intensity…
Magnetic fields generated by a current flowing through a U-shaped coil connecting two copper foils were measured using ultrafast proton radiography. Two $\sim$1.25 kJ, 1-ns laser pulses propagated through laser entrance holes in the front…
We present a variational framework in which (i) guiding-center kinetic theory, (ii) macroscopic force balance with gyrotropic/anisotropic pressure, and (iii) quasisymmetry (QS) constraints appear as different facets of a single structure.…
Plasma-based mineral-processing routes, such as hydrogen plasma smelting reduction (HPSR), which converts iron-ore fines directly to liquid metal in a single scalable step are commonly modeled by treating the arc as a spatially uniform heat…
The analytical modeling of a plasma wakefield driven by a relativistic proton beam is an element in optimizing advanced plasma-based acceleration schemes. In this work, we present a 1D nonlinear fluid framework under the quasi-static…
A high resolution, Diagnostic Instrument Manipulator (DIM)-based x-ray Bragg crystal spectrometer has been calibrated for and deployed at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to diagnose plasma conditions in ignition capsules near…
The support structure is an integral part of the design of nuclear fusion reactors, especially 3D stellarator devices. A practical reactor's coils and support structures must have three competing qualities: an accurate magnetic field for…
Using 20 OMEGA laser beams at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, to irradiate a flat plastic target in a hollow ring configuration, we created supersonic cylindrical stable plasma jets with self-generated…
Evolution of the hot spot plasma conditions was measured using high-resolution x-ray spectroscopy at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The capsules were filled with DD gas with trace levels of Kr, and had either a high-density-carbon…
SoPlasmaFoam is an open-source, multi-region plasma-dielectric solver built on OpenFOAM, integrated with the PETSc linear-algebra suite (CPU and GPU back-ends), the blastAMR adaptive-mesh-refinement library (hexahedral and polyhedral…