40 research outputs found

    Sheath parameters for non-Debye plasmas: simulations and arc damage

    Get PDF
    This paper describes the surface environment of the dense plasma arcs that damage rf accelerators, tokamaks and other high gradient structures. We simulate the dense, non-ideal plasma sheath near a metallic surface using Molecular Dynamics (MD) to evaluate sheaths in the non-Debye region for high density, low temperature plasmas. We use direct two-component MD simulations where the interactions between all electrons and ions are computed explicitly. We find that the non-Debye sheath can be extrapolated from the Debye sheath parameters with small corrections. We find that these parameters are roughly consistent with previous PIC code estimates, pointing to densities in the range 10241025m310^{24} - 10^{25}\mathrm{m}^{-3}. The high surface fields implied by these results could produce field emission that would short the sheath and cause an instability in the time evolution of the arc, and this mechanism could limit the maximum density and surface field in the arc. These results also provide a way of understanding how the "burn voltage" of an arc is generated, and the relation between self sputtering and the burn voltage, while not well understood, seems to be closely correlated. Using these results, and equating surface tension and plasma pressure, it is possible to infer a range of plasma densities and sheath potentials from SEM images of arc damage. We find that the high density plasma these results imply and the level of plasma pressure they would produce is consistent with arc damage on a scale 100 nm or less, in examples where the liquid metal would cool before this structure would be lost. We find that the sub-micron component of arc damage, the burn voltage, and fluctuations in the visible light production of arcs may be the most direct indicators of the parameters of the dense plasma arc, and the most useful diagnostics of the mechanisms limiting gradients in accelerators.Comment: 8 pages, 16 figure

    Hydrostatic Level Sensors as High Precision Ground Motion Instrumentation for Tevatron and Other Energy Frontier Accelerators

    Full text link
    Particle accelerators pushed the limits of our knowledge in search of the answers to most fundamental questions about micro-world and our Universe. In these pursuits, accelerators progressed to higher and higher energies and particle beam intensities as well as increasingly smaller and smaller beam sizes. As the result, modern existing and planned energy frontier accelerators demand very tight tolerances on alignment and stability of their elements: magnets, accelerating cavities, vacuum chambers, etc. In this article we describe the instruments developed for and used in such accelerators as Fermilab's Tevatron (FNAL, Batavia, IL USA) and for the studies toward an International Linear Collider (ILC). The instrumentation includes Hydrostatic Level Sensors (HLS) for very low frequency measurements. We present design features of the sensors, outline their technical parameters, describe test and calibration procedures and discuss different regimes of operation. Experimental results of the ground motion measurements with these detectors will be presented in subsequent paper

    High Resolution Sharp Computational Methods for Elliptic and Parabolic Problems in Complex Geometries

    Full text link

    Analysis of Non-Commuting Vectors with Application to Quantum Mechanics and Vector Calculus

    No full text

    Numerical Procedures for Calculation of Stress Distribution in Sheet-Stringer- Frame Combinations

    No full text

    Problems of Electrostatic Levitation and Artificial Gravity

    No full text

    Configuration interaction in orbital theories

    No full text
    corecore