801 research outputs found
Dynamics of spin 1/2 quantum plasmas
The fully nonlinear governing equations for spin 1/2 quantum plasmas are
presented. Starting from the Pauli equation, the relevant plasma equations are
derived, and it is shown that nontrivial quantum spin couplings arise, enabling
studies of the combined collective and spin dynamics. The linear response of
the quantum plasma in an electron--ion system is obtained and analyzed.
Applications of the theory to solid state and astrophysical systems as well as
dusty plasmas are pointed out.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Physical Review Letter
Electrodynamics of Magnetars III: Pair Creation Processes in an Ultrastrong Magnetic Field and Particle Heating in a Dynamic Magnetosphere
We consider the details of the QED processes that create electron-positron
pairs in magnetic fields approaching and exceeding 10^{14} G. The formation of
free and bound pairs is addressed, and the importance of positronium
dissociation by thermal X-rays is noted. We calculate the collision cross
section between an X-ray and a gamma ray, and point out a resonance in the
cross section when the gamma ray is close to the threshold for pair conversion.
We also discuss how the pair creation rate in the open-field circuit and the
outer magnetosphere can be strongly enhanced by instabilities near the light
cylinder. When the current has a strong fluctuating component, a cascade
develops. We examine the details of particle heating, and show that a high rate
of pair creation can be sustained close to the star, but only if the spin
period is shorter than several seconds. The dissipation rate in this turbulent
state can easily accommodate the observed radio output of the transient
radio-emitting magnetars, and even their infrared emission. Finally, we outline
how a very high rate of pair creation on the open magnetic field lines can help
to stabilize a static twist in the closed magnetosphere and to regulate the
loss of magnetic helicity by reconnection at the light cylinder.Comment: 25 pages, submitted to the Astrophysical Journa
Magnetic Photon Splitting: Computations of Proper-time Rates and Spectra
The splitting of photons in the presence of an intense magnetic field has
recently found astrophysical applications in polar cap models of gamma-ray
pulsars and in magnetar scenarios for soft gamma repeaters. Numerical
computation of the polarization-dependent rates of this third order QED process
for arbitrary field strengths and energies below pair creation threshold is
difficult: thus early analyses focused on analytic developments and simpler
asymptotic forms. The recent astrophysical interest spurred the use of the
S-matrix approach by Mentzel, Berg and Wunner to determine splitting rates. In
this paper, we present numerical computations of a full proper-time expression
for the rate of splitting that was obtained by Stoneham, and is exact up to the
pair creation threshold. While the numerical results derived here are in accord
with the earlier asymptotic forms due to Adler, our computed rates still differ
by as much as factors of 3 from the S-matrix re-evaluation of Wilke and Wunner,
reflecting the extreme difficulty of generating accurate S-matrix numerics for
fields below about \teq{4.4\times 10^{13}}Gauss. We find that our proper-time
rates appear very accurate, and exceed Adler's asymptotic specializations
significantly only for photon energies just below pair threshold and for
supercritical fields, but always by less than a factor of around 2.6. We also
provide a useful analytic series expansion for the scattering amplitude valid
at low energies.Comment: 13 pages, AASTeX format, including 3 eps figures, ApJ in pres
The effect of initial conditions on the electromagnetic radiation generation in type III solar radio bursts
Copyright 2013 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. This article appeared in Physics of Plasmas 20, 062903 (2013) and may be found at .Extensive particle-in-cell simulations of fast electron beams injected in a background magnetised plasma with a decreasing density profile were carried out. These simulations were intended to further shed light on a newly proposed mechanism for the generation of electromagnetic waves in type III solar radio bursts [D. Tsiklauri, Phys. Plasmas, 18, 052903 (2011)]. The numerical simulations were carried out using different density profiles and fast electron distribution functions. It is shown that electromagnetic L and R modes are excited by the transverse current, initially imposed on the system. In the course of the simulations no further interaction of the electron beam with the background plasma could be observed
Nonlinear propagation of light in Dirac matter
The nonlinear interaction between intense laser light and a quantum plasma is
modeled by a collective Dirac equation coupled with the Maxwell equations. The
model is used to study the nonlinear propagation of relativistically intense
laser light in a quantum plasma including the electron spin-1/2 effect. The
relativistic effects due to the high-intensity laser light lead, in general, to
a downshift of the laser frequency, similar to a classical plasma where the
relativistic mass increase leads to self-induced transparency of laser light
and other associated effects. The electron spin-1/2 effects lead to a frequency
up- or downshift of the electromagnetic (EM) wave, depending on the spin state
of the plasma and the polarization of the EM wave. For laboratory solid density
plasmas, the spin-1/2 effects on the propagation of light are small, but they
may be significant in super-dense plasma in the core of white dwarf stars. We
also discuss extensions of the model to include kinetic effects of a
distribution of the electrons on the nonlinear propagation of EM waves in a
quantum plasma.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure
The QCD phase diagram and the gamma-ray bursts
Phase transitions which can take place in matter at different temperatures and densities are seen in the quantum chromodynamics diagram. The possibility that gamma-ray bursts might result from a phase change in the interior of a pulsar is discussed in the present work. The energy released in the conversion of a metastable star into a stable star is calculated and shown to be of the order of 1050-1053 erg, accounting for both long and short gamma ray bursts.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6TVB-4P2S5YJ-41/1/fb6d616877df41309e3835d333c5500
A Free-Electron Laser in the Pulsar Magnetosphere
We have studied systematically the free-electron laser in the context of high
brightness pulsar radio emission. In this paper, we have numerically examined
the case where a transverse electromagnetic wave is distorting the motion of a
relativistic electron beam while travelling over one stellar radius (). For different sets of parameters, coherent emission is generated by
bunches of beam electrons in the radio domain, with bandwidths of 3 GHz. Pulse
power often reached , which corresponds with brightness
temperature of . The duration of these pulses is of the order of
nanoseconds. In the context of pulsar radio emission, our results indicate that
the laser can produce elementary bursts of radiation which build up the
observed microstructures of a few tens of microseconds duration. The process is
sensitive mostly to the beam particles energy, number density and the
background magnetic field, but much less so to the transverse wave parameters.
We demonstrate that the operation of a free-electron laser with a transverse
electromagnetic wiggler in the pulsar magnetosphere occurs preferably at moder
ate Lorentz factors , high beam density where is the Goldrei ch-Julian
density at a stellar radius , and finally, at large altitude where the
background magnetic field is low .Comment: 11 pages, 25 figures, Accepted for publication in A&
Radio Spectral Evolution of an X-ray Poor Impulsive Solar Flare: Implications for Plasma Heating and Electron Acceleration
We present radio and X-ray observations of an impulsive solar flare that was
moderately intense in microwaves, yet showed very meager EUV and X-ray
emission. The flare occurred on 2001 Oct 24 and was well-observed at radio
wavelengths by the Nobeyama Radioheliograph (NoRH), the Nobeyama Radio
Polarimeters (NoRP), and by the Owens Valley Solar Array (OVSA). It was also
observed in EUV and X-ray wavelength bands by the TRACE, GOES, and Yohkoh
satellites. We find that the impulsive onset of the radio emission is
progressively delayed with increasing frequency relative to the onset of hard
X-ray emission. In contrast, the time of flux density maximum is progressively
delayed with decreasing frequency. The decay phase is independent of radio
frequency. The simple source morphology and the excellent spectral coverage at
radio wavelengths allowed us to employ a nonlinear chi-squared minimization
scheme to fit the time series of radio spectra to a source model that accounts
for the observed radio emission in terms of gyrosynchrotron radiation from
MeV-energy electrons in a relatively dense thermal plasma. We discuss plasma
heating and electron acceleration in view of the parametric trends implied by
the model fitting. We suggest that stochastic acceleration likely plays a role
in accelerating the radio-emitting electrons.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure
Spin-Dependent Cyclotron Decay Rates in Strong Magnetic Fields
Cyclotron decay and absorption rates have been well studied in the
literature, focusing primarily on spectral, angular and polarization
dependence. Astrophysical applications usually do not require retention of
information on the electron spin state, and these are normally averaged in
obtaining the requisite rates. In magnetic fields, higher order quantum
processes such as Compton scattering become resonant at the cyclotron frequency
and its harmonics, with the resonances being formally divergent. Such
divergences are usually eliminated by accounting for the finite lifetimes of
excited Landau states. This practice requires the use of spin-dependent
cyclotron rates in order to obtain accurate determinations of process rates
very near cyclotronic resonances, the phase space domain most relevant for
certain applications to pulsar models. This paper develops previous results in
the literature to obtain compact analytic expressions for cyclotron decay
rates/widths in terms of a series of Legendre functions of the second kind;
these expressions can be expediently used in astrophysical models. The rates
are derived using two popular eigenstate formalisms, namely that due to Sokolov
and Ternov, and that due to Johnson and Lippmann. These constitute two sets of
eigenfunctions of the Dirac equation that diagonalize different operators, and
accordingly yield different spin-dependent cyclotron rates. This paper
illustrates the attractive Lorentz transformation characteristics of the
Sokolov and Ternov formulation, which is another reason why it is preferable
when electron spin information must be explicitly retained.Comment: 11 pages, 2 embedded figures, apjgalley format, To appear in The
Astrophysical Journal, Vol 630, September 1, 2005 issu
Magnetic Photon Splitting: the S-Matrix Formulation in the Landau Representation
Calculations of reaction rates for the third-order QED process of photon
splitting in strong magnetic fields traditionally have employed either the
effective Lagrangian method or variants of Schwinger's proper-time technique.
Recently, Mentzel, Berg and Wunner (1994) presented an alternative derivation
via an S-matrix formulation in the Landau representation. Advantages of such a
formulation include the ability to compute rates near pair resonances above
pair threshold. This paper presents new developments of the Landau
representation formalism as applied to photon splitting, providing significant
advances beyond the work of Mentzel et al. by summing over the spin quantum
numbers of the electron propagators, and analytically integrating over the
component of momentum of the intermediate states that is parallel to field. The
ensuing tractable expressions for the scattering amplitudes are satisfyingly
compact, and of an appearance familiar to S-matrix theory applications. Such
developments can facilitate numerical computations of splitting considerably
both below and above pair threshold. Specializations to two regimes of interest
are obtained, namely the limit of highly supercritical fields and the domain
where photon energies are far inferior to that for the threshold of
single-photon pair creation. In particular, for the first time the
low-frequency amplitudes are simply expressed in terms of the Gamma function,
its integral and its derivatives. In addition, the equivalence of the
asymptotic forms in these two domains to extant results from effective
Lagrangian/proper-time formulations is demonstrated.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, REVTeX; accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
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