Confinement of relativistic electrons in a magnetic mirror en route to a magnetized relativistic pair plasma

Abstract

Creating magnetized relativistic pair plasma in the laboratory would enable the exploration of unique plasma physics relevant to some of the most energetic events in the universe. As a step towards a laboratory pair plasma, we have demonstrated effective confinement of multi-$\mathrm{MeV}$ electrons inside a pulsed-power-driven $13$ $\mathrm{T}$ magnetic mirror field with a mirror ratio of $2.6$. The confinement is diagnosed by measuring the axial and radial losses with magnetic spectrometers. The loss spectra are consistent with $\le 2.5$ $\mathrm{MeV}$ electrons confined in the mirror for $\sim 1$ $\mathrm{ns}$. With a source of $10^{12}$ electron-positron pairs at comparable energies, this magnetic mirror would confine a relativistic pair plasma with Lorentz factor $\gamma \sim 6$ and magnetization $\sigma \sim 40$.

8 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Scaling the Yield of Laser-Driven Electron-Positron Jets to Laboratory Astrophysical Applications
• A field theory approach to the evolution of canonical helicity and energy
• Dispersion Calibration for the National Ignition Facility Electron Positron Proton Spectrometers for Intense Laser Matter Interactions

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Laboratory realization of relativistic pair-plasma beams
• Confinement Time and Ambipolar Potential in a Relativistic Mirror-Confined Plasma
• Impact of temperature asymmetry and small fraction of static positive ions on the relaxed states of a relativistic hot pair plasma
• On the spatial distribution of electron energy loss due to gyro-cooling in hot-star magnetospheres