Stopping power of dense plasmas: The collisional method and limitations of the dielectric formalism

We present a study of the stopping power of plasmas using two main approaches: the collisional (scattering theory) and the dielectric formalisms. In the former case, we use a semiclassical method based on quantum scattering theory. In the latter case, we use the full description given by the extension of the Lindhard dielectric function for plasmas of all degeneracies. We compare these two theories and show that the dielectric formalism has limitations when it is used for slow heavy ions or atoms in dense plasmas. We present a study of these limitations and show the regimes where the dielectric formalism can be used, with appropriate corrections to include the usual quantum and classical limits. On the other hand, the semiclassical method shows the correct behavior for all plasma conditions and projectile velocity and charge. We consider different models for the ion charge distributions, including bare and dressed ions as well as neutral atoms.Fil: Clauser, Cesar Fernando. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Arista, Nestor Ricardo. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentin

Alpha particles diffusion due to charge changes

Alpha particles diffusion due to charge changes in a magnetized plasma is studied. Analytical calculations and numerical simulations are employed to show that this process can be very important in the pedestal-edge-SOL regions. This is the first study that presents clear evidence of the importance of atomic processes on the diffusion of alpha particles. A simple 1D model that includes inelastic collisions with plasma species, "cold" neutrals, and partially ionized species was employed. The code, which follows the exact particle orbits and includes the effect of inelastic collisions via a Monte Carlo type random process, runs on a graphic processor unit (GPU). The analytical and numerical results show excellent agreement when a uniform background (plasma and cold species) is assumed. The simulations also show that the gradients in the density of the plasma and cold species, which are large and opposite in the edge region, produce an inward flux of alpha particles. Calculations of the alpha particles flux reaching the walls or divertor plates should include these processes.Fil: Clauser, Cesar Fernando. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; ArgentinaFil: Farengo, Ricardo. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentin

The effect of inelastic collisions on the transport of alpha particles in ITER-like plasmas

The effect of charge changes on the transport of alpha particles in ITER-like plasmas is studied with a numerical code that follows the exact particle trajectories and includes the effect of elastic and inelastic collisions. It is shown that charge changing processes can produce significant changes in the transport of alpha particles in the edge-SOL region. The addition of inelastic collisions actually reduces the alpha particle loss rate below the level obtained when only elastic (Coulomb) collisions are included. This is due to the inward flux produced by the neutral density gradient. Power losses, on the other hand, remain at approximately the same level because the average energy of the lost particles is higher when inelastic collisions are included. Finally, the spatial distribution of the lost particles changes significantly when inelastic collisions are added, with a larger fraction of the lost particles reaching the wall.Fil: Clauser, Cesar Fernando. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energí­a Atómica. Gerencia del Area Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia de Física (Centro Atómico Balseiro). División Colisiones Atómicas; ArgentinaFil: Farengo, Ricardo. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Area de Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia de Física (Centro Atómico Bariloche); Argentin

Energy loss and Z oscillation of atomic beams in plasmas

We apply a semiclassical partial-wave-scattering method based on the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approximation to study the transport cross section and the energy loss of neutral or ionized atomic beams in plasmas. This approach reproduces the exact quantum result in a satisfactory manner, even in several extreme conditions of plasma densities and temperatures, and agrees with the results of linear or perturbative calculations for bare ions in the appropriate limits. We pay special attention to low projectile speeds where strong oscillations in the transport cross section and energy loss - as a function of projectile's atomic number - are observed. We study these oscillatory phenomena varying the projectile speed and its ionization degree and the plasma temperature and density. We analyze in physical terms these effects and present a diagram of plasma conditions showing the regions where these oscillations may occur for both neutral and ionized beams.Fil: Clauser, Cesar Fernando. Comisión Nacional de Energí­a Atómica. Gerencia del Area Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia de Física (Centro Atómico Balseiro). División Colisiones Atómicas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Arista, Nestor Ricardo. Comisión Nacional de Energí­a Atómica. Gerencia del Area Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia de Física (Centro Atómico Balseiro). División Colisiones Atómicas; Argentin

Exact photoionization and radiative recombination cross section in a Coulomb potential

In this work, we analytically evaluate the exact matrix element for a non-relativistic Continuum-Bound radiative transition in a Coulomb potential. We apply this result to the photoionization (and radiative recombination) process, and calculate the total cross sections giving an analytical expression for the transition from the ground state. To our best knowledge the exact solution to this problem has never been addressed even though the analytical calculation is quite simple, and the final result is not more complicated than any of its approximations. We compare our result with the well-known plane wave and Coulombian dipolar approximations, in a wide range of energies.Fil: Clauser, Cesar Fernando. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; ArgentinaFil: Barrachina Tejada, Raul Oscar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentin

Zero energy resonances in atomic processes within a plasma

We investigate different atomic processes that might occur in the interior of plasmas. In particular we apply the Final-State Interaction theory in order to study the behavior of the corresponding cross sections when the relative energy of a pair of charged particles in the initial or final states vanishes. Through this analysis we uncover the presence of zero - energy resonances for particular configurations of density and temperature. For fusion plasmas, these effects might have an important impact on the working conditions and performance of the reactor.Fil: Clauser, Cesar Fernando. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; ArgentinaFil: Barrachina Tejada, Raul Oscar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentin

Zero-energy resonance effects in atomic processes within a plasma environment

We investigate the emergence of zero-energy resonance effects in atomic processes occurring within a plasma. By applying the final-state interaction theory we uncover the presence of these effects for particular configurations of density and temperature. We study the distortions that these resonances might produce in the corresponding cross sections whenever the relative momentum of a pair of charged particles intervening in the atomic process vanishes. We exemplify this general theory by applying it to the study of ionization processes by photon or ion impact. Finally we demonstrate that while for certain configurations of density and temperature these resonances might be blurred out by inhomogeneities; in others, the plasma might be tuned to the conditions for a zero-energy resonance, producing cross sections many times larger than standard estimates at the energy threshold.Fil: Clauser, Cesar Fernando. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; ArgentinaFil: Barrachina Tejada, Raul Oscar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentin

Off-shell distortions of multichannel atomic processes

Any multichannel problem can be reduced to a succession of two-body events. However, these basic building blocks of many-body theories do not correspond to elastic processes but are off-the-energy-shell. In view of this difficulty, the great majority of the Distorted-Wave models includes a subsidiary approximation where these off-shell terms are arbitrarily forced to lie on the energy shell. At a first glance, since the energy deficiency is negligible for high enough velocities, the on-shell assumption seems to be completely justified. However, for the case of Coulomb interactions, the two-body off-shell distortions have branch-point singularities on the on-shell limit. In this article we demonstrate that these singularities might produce sizeable distortions of multiple scattering amplitudes, mainly when dealing with ion-ion collisions. Finally, we propose a method of including these distortions that might lead to better results that removing them completely.Fil: Barrachina Tejada, Raul Oscar. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Clauser, Cesar Fernando. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

The effect of a saturated kink on the dynamics of tungsten impurities in the plasma core

We studied the effect of saturated kink like instabilities on the redistribution of W impurities. A numerical code that follows the exact trajectories of the impurity ions in the total fields and includes collisions was employed. The code is written in CUDA C and runs in graphical processing units, allowing simulations with a large number of particles with modest resources.The total electric and magnetic fields are calculated as the sum of a simple analytical equilibrium (large aspect ratio, circular cross section) plus the fields of the kink mode. Our simulations show that when the W ions have a thermal velocity distribution, with zero mean velocity, the kink hasno effect on the W density. However, when we include the plasma rotation and the drag on the impurities, the kink can affect the W density. When the average passing frequency of the W ions is similar to the frequency of the kink mode, the expulsion of W ions from the plasma core is maximum and the W density profile shows a hollow structure. This could have implications for the mitigation of W accumulation.Fil: Ferrari, Hugo Emilio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia de Física (Centro Atómico Bariloche); ArgentinaFil: Farengo, Ricardo. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Balseiro; ArgentinaFil: Clauser, Cesar Fernando. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia de Física (Centro Atómico Bariloche); Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Balseiro; Argentin

FOCUS: A full-orbit CUDA solver for particle simulations in magnetized plasmas

A Full-Orbit CUDA Solver for particle simulations in plasmas, FOCUS, has been developed. The code follows exact particle trajectories by solving Newton’s equations with the Lorentz force. The code can use fields calculated analytically or numerically and it is also possible to use the information provided by equilibrium reconstruction and transport codes. FOCUS has an elastic collisions module which covers the whole particle energy range in magnetic fusion devices. Moreover, an atomic collision module was also included to simulate the interaction of the test particles with neutral or partially ionized species. Regarding performance, the main feature is that the code runs on GPUs, allowing the simulation of a large number of particles using moderate computational resources. Different versions of the code have been used in several papers. Here we present a complete description of its capabilities, the basis physics included and detailed information about the numerical algorithms employed. Finally, some examples are presented.Fil: Clauser, Cesar Fernando. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; ArgentinaFil: Farengo, Ricardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; ArgentinaFil: Ferrari, Hugo Emilio. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentin