Related papers: Dynamo-driven plasmoid formation from a current-sh…
The nonlinear evolution of the Kelvin Helmholtz instability in a magnetized plasma with a perpendicular flow close to, or in, the supermagnetosonic regime can produce a significant parallel-to-perpendicular pressure anisotropy. This…
Analytic scaling relations are derived for a phenomenological model of the plasmoid instability in an evolving current sheet, including the effects of reconnection outflow. Two scenarios are considered, where the plasmoid instability can be…
Magnetic fields pervade the entire Universe and affect the formation and evolution of astrophysical systems from cosmological to planetary scales. The generation and dynamical amplification of extragalactic magnetic fields through cosmic…
In the paradigm of magnetic acceleration of relativistic outflows, a crucial point is identifying a viable mechanism to convert the Poynting flux into the kinetic energy of the plasma, and eventually into the observed radiation. Since the…
Based on our recent MHD simulations, first, a concept of the successive merging of plasmoids and fragmentation in the current sheet in the standard flare model is presented. Then, using a 2.5-D electromagnetic particle-in-cell model with…
Energy dynamics calculations in a 3D fluid simulation of drift wave turbulence in the linear Large Plasma Device (LAPD) [W. Gekelman et al., Rev. Sci. Inst. 62, 2875 (1991)] illuminate processes that drive and dissipate the turbulence.…
Several new results in the physics of edge poloidal flows, turbulent stresses and momentum transport are reported. These are based on experiments on the HL-2A tokamak. Significant deviation from neoclassical prediction for mean poloidal…
It is shown that a dynamo can operate in an Active Galactic Nuclei accretion disk due to the Keplerian shear and due to the helical motions of expanding and twisting plumes of plasma heated by many star passages through the disk. Each plume…
Magnetized turbulence and magnetic reconnection are often invoked to explain the nonthermal emission observed from a wide variety of astrophysical sources. By means of fully-kinetic 2D and 3D PIC simulations, we investigate the interplay…
Nearby pulsar wind nebulae exhibit complex morphological features: jets, torus, arcs and knots. These structures are well captured and understood in the scope of global magnetohydrodynamic models. However, the origin of knots in the inner…
The magnetohydrodynamic kink instability is observed and identified experimentally as a poloidal flux amplification mechanism for coaxial gun spheromak formation. Plasmas in this experiment fall into three distinct regimes which depend on…
Detailed measurements of intrinsic axial flow generation parallel to the magnetic field in the controlled shear decorrelation experiment linear plasma device with no axial momentum input are presented and compared to theory. The results…
A novel plasma state has been found [C.~Ak\c{c}ay, J.~Finn, R.~Nebel and D.~Barnes, Phys.~Plasmas \textbf{24}, 052503 (2017)] in the presence of a uniform applied axial magnetic field in periodic cylindrical geometry. This state is driven…
Some common properties of helical magnetic fields in decaying and driven turbulence are discussed. These include mainly the inverse cascade that produces fields on progressively larger scales. Magnetic helicity also restricts the evolution…
When a planar shock wave interacts with a random pattern of pre-shock density non-uniformities, it generates an anisotropic turbulent velocity/vorticity field. This turbulence plays an important role at the early stages of the mixing…
The creation and design of a plasma thruster are considered using a rotating cylindrical plasma flow in crossed magnetic fields. The thruster scheme uses this plasma guided by a permanent, radial and a time-dependent axial magnetic field.…
Colloidal particles moving in a fluid interact via the induced velocity field. The collective dynamic state for a class of actively forced colloids, driven by harmonic potentials via a rule that couples forces to configurations, to perform…
We present results from 2.5-dimensional Particle-in-Cell simulations of the interaction of nonlinear Alfven waves with thin current sheets in relativistic plasmas. We find that the Alfven waves cause the current sheet to bend and kink and…
Boozer addressed the role of magnetic helicity in dynamos [Phys Fluids \textbf{B},(1993)]. He pointed out that the magnetic helicity conservation implies that the dynamo action is more easily attainable if the electric potential varies over…
We present results from pulsed-power-driven magnetic reconnection experiments, in which we drove two exploding wire arrays in parallel to produce colliding plasma flows with anti-parallel magnetic fields of 1.2$\pm$0.2 T. The experimental…