Related papers: On the linear stability of collisionless microtear…
In a recent one-dimensional numerical fluid simulation study [Saxena et al., Phys. Plasmas 13,032309 (2006)], it was found that an instability is associated with a special class of one-dimensional nonlinear solutions for modulated light…
We report on a theoretical discovery of new regimes of Alfv\'en eigenmode (AE) induced fast ion transport in tokamak plasmas, where microturbulence plays the role of a mediator of fast ion relaxation. Coulomb collisional scattering alone…
Sustained collisionless interpenetrating plasma flows have been generated on the OMEGA laser facility to enable direct investigation of nonlinear evolution of fields generated by electromagnetic kinetic instabilities. FLASH simulations and…
Recent observations reveal that magnetic turbulence in the nearly colisionless solar wind plasma extends to scales smaller than the plasma microscales, such as ion gyroradius and ion inertial length. Measured breaks in the spectra of…
Observations of the intracluster medium (ICM) in galaxy clusters suggest for the presence of turbulence and the magnetic fields existence has been proved through observations of Faraday Rotation and synchrotron emission. The ICM is also…
The nonlinear evolution of resistive double tearing modes (DTMs) with safety factor values q=1 and q=3 is studied in a reduced cylindrical model of a tokamak plasma. We focus on cases where the resonant surfaces are a small distance apart.…
In low-density plasma environments, such as the intracluster medium (ICM), the Larmour frequency is much larger than the ion-ion collision frequency. In such a case, the thermal pressure becomes anisotropic with respect to the magnetic…
In magnetic confinement fusion devices, the ratio of the plasma pressure to the magnetic field energy, $\beta$, can become sufficiently large that electromagnetic microinstabilities become unstable, driving turbulence that distorts or…
It is shown that the transport in low temperature, collisional, bounded plasma is enhanced by instabilities at high magnetic field. While the magnetic field confines the electrons in a stable plasma, the instability completely destroys the…
The electromagnetic modes possibly unstable in strongly magnetized plasmas are identified. The regime where this instability might stand out compared to the incoherent electron-cyclotron radiation is explored. These modes are relevant to…
How thermal equilibrium is determined in a weakly collisional plasma is a fundamental question in plasma physics. This letter shows that the turbulence driven by the magnetic curvature and density gradient tends to equilibrate the…
One of the main applications in plasma physics concerns the energy production through thermo-nuclear fusion. The controlled fusion is achieved by magnetic confinement i.e., the plasma is confined into a toroidal domain (tokamak) under the…
Recently a new transport theory of cosmic rays in magnetized space plasmas extending the quasilinear approximation to the particle orbit has been developed for the case of an axisymmetric incompressible magnetic turbulence. Here we…
A linear gyrokinetic particle-in-cell scheme, which is valid for arbitrary perpendicular wavelength $k_\perp\rho_i$ and includes the parallel dynamic along the field line, is developed to study the local electrostatic drift modes in point…
We investigate linear perturbations in an incompressible, weakly collisional, anisotropic plasma, taking heat fluxes into account. Our analysis identifies a new class of time-invariant perturbations that encompass heat flux variations and…
In this work we numerically demonstrate both significant transient (i.e. non-modal) linear amplification and sustained nonlinear turbulence in a kinetic plasma system with no unstable eigenmodes. The particular system considered is an…
During the last decade it has become evident that the magnetorotational instability is at the heart of the enhanced angular momentum transport in weakly magnetized accretion disks around neutron stars and black holes. In this paper, we…
We present two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of the fully kinetic collisionless magnetorotational instability (MRI) in weakly magnetized (high $\beta$) pair plasma. The central result of this numerical analysis is the…
Spherical tokamaks (STs) have many desirable features that make them a suitable choice for fusion power plants. To understand their confinement properties, accurate calculation of turbulent micro-instabilities is necessary for tokamak…
Gyrokinetics is a rich and rewarding playground to study some of the mysteries of modern physics. In this thesis I present work, motivated by the quest for fusion energy, which seeks to uncover some of the inner workings of turbulence in…