Related papers: Plasma Core Rocket Engines
Recently achieved high intensities of short laser pulses open new prospects in their application to hole boring in inhomogeneous overdense plasmas and for ignition in precompressed DT fusion targets. A simple analytical model and numerical…
The following notes are intended to provide a brief primer in plasma physics, introducing common definitions, basic properties and processes typically found in plasmas. These concepts are inherent in contemporary plasma-based accelerator…
It is shown that electron injection into a laser-driven plasma bubble can be manipulated by applying an external magnetic field in the presence of a plasma density gradient. The down-ramp of the density-tailored plasma locally reduces the…
Nuclear waste cleanup is challenged by the handling of feed stocks that are both unknown and complex. Plasma filtering, operating on dissociated elements, offers advantages over chemical methods in processing such wastes. The costs incurred…
We present results from pulsed-power driven differentially rotating plasma experiments designed to simulate physics relevant to astrophysical disks and jets. In these experiments, angular momentum is injected by the ram pressure of the…
The efficient production of electricity from nuclear fusion in magnetically confined plasmas relies on a good confinement of the thermal energy. For more than thirty years, the observation that such confinement depends on the mass of the…
The radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) of charged particles has been considered a challenging task in laser particle acceleration. Laser-driven proton/ion acceleration has attracted considerable interests due to its underlying physics…
Excluding speculations about future breakthrough discoveries in physics, it is shown that with what is at present known, and also what is technically feasible, manned space flight to the limits of the solar system and beyond deep into the…
In this paper we present an investigation of numerical Monte Carlo simulations of the diffusive shock acceleration in the test particle limit. Very high gamma flow astrophysical plasmas, have been used, from $\gamma_{up}$ $\sim50$ up to…
The combustion of liquid fuels emulsified with water have long generated interest in the internal combustion engine research community. Typically, these fuels consist of small quantities of water emulsified with ultrasonification or other…
We calculate the nucleosynthesis during stable nuclear burning on an accreting neutron star. This is appropriate for weakly magnetic neutron stars accreting at near-Eddington rates in low mass X-ray binaries, and for most accreting X-ray…
An organometallic powder (platinum (II) acetylacetonate) is decomposed in the post-discharge of an atmospheric RF plasma torch to deposit Pt nanoparticles on carbon black supports. The resulting nanohybrid materials are characterized by…
Controlled fusion with advanced fuels requires average electron and ion energies above 100 keV (equivalent to 1.1 billion K) in a dense plasma. We have met this requirement and demonstrated electron and ion energies over 100 keV in a…
The dynamics of an x-ray-ionized two-component core-shell nanosystem is probed using doped helium (He) nanodroplets. First, a soft x-ray pump pulse selectively inner-shell ionizes the core cluster formed of heavier rare-gas atoms, causing…
Recent experiments have observed magnetic reconnection in high-energy-density, laser-produced plasma bubbles, with reconnection rates observed to be much higher than can be explained by classical theory. Based on fully kinetic particle…
Advanced nuclear fission, which encompasses various innovative nuclear reactor designs, could contribute to the decarbonization of the United States electricity sector. However, little is known about how cost-competitive these reactors…
A novel approach for positron injection and acceleration in laser driven plasma wakefield is proposed. A theoretical model is developed and confirmed through PIC simulation. One ring-shaped beam and one co-axially propagating Gaussian beam…
We present a new acceleration scheme capable of accelerating electrons and ions in an underdense plasma. Transversely Pumped Acceleration (TPA) uses multiple arrays of counter-propagating laser beamlets that focus onto a central…
The core shift method is a powerful method to estimate the physical parameters in relativistic jets from active galactic nuclei. The classical approach assumes a conical geometry of a jet and a constant plasma speed. However, recent…
We examine plasma composition of jets in active galactic nuclei through the comparison of the total pressure ($P$) with partial pressures of electrons and protons in a cocoon. The total pressure is estimated from the analysis of an…