Observations of a Field-Aligned Ion/Ion-Beam Instability in a Magnetized Laboratory Plasma

Abstract

Collisionless coupling between super Alfvénic ions and an ambient plasma parallel to a background magnetic field is mediated by a set of electromagnetic ion/ion-beam instabilities including the resonant right hand instability (RHI). To study this coupling and its role in parallel shock formation, a new experimental configuration at the University of California, Los Angeles utilizes high-energy and high-repetition-rate lasers to create a super-Alfvénic field-aligned debris plasma within an ambient plasma in the Large Plasma Device (LAPD). We used a time-resolved fluorescence monochromator and an array of Langmuir probes to characterize the laser plasma velocity distribution and density. The debris ions were observed to be sufficiently super-Alfvénic and dense to excite the RHI. Measurements with magnetic flux probes exhibited a right-hand circularly polarized frequency chirp consistent with the excitation of the RHI near the laser target. We compared measurements to 2D hybrid simulations of the experiment.

References in corpus (2)

• Generation and Evolution of High-Mach Number, Laser-Driven Magnetized Collisionless Shocks in the Laboratory
• Hybrid simulation of a parallel collisionless shock in the Large Plasma Device

Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Enhancement of the non-resonant streaming instability by particle collisions