Slow test charge response in a dusty plasma with Kappa distributed electrons and ions

The electrostatic potential around a slowly moving test charge is studied in a dusty plasma where the ions and electrons follow a powerlaw Kappa distribution in velocity space. A test charge moving with a speed much smaller than the dust thermal speed gives rise to a short-scale Debye-Hueckel potential as well as a long-range far-field potential decreasing as inverse cube of the distance to the test charge along the propagation direction. The potentials are significantly modified in the presence of high-energy tails, modeled by lower spectral indices in the ion and electron Kappa distribution functions. Plasma parameters relevant to laboratory dusty plasmas are discussed

Almost reducibility for finitely differentiable SL(2,R)-valued quasi-periodic cocycles

Quasi-periodic cocycles with a diophantine frequency and with values in SL(2,R) are shown to be almost reducible as long as they are close enough to a constant, in the topology of k times differentiable functions, with k great enough. Almost reducibility is obtained by analytic approximation after a loss of differentiability which only depends on the frequency and on the constant part. As in the analytic case, if their fibered rotation number is diophantine or rational with respect to the frequency, such cocycles are in fact reducible. This extends Eliasson's theorem on Schr\"odinger cocycles to the differentiable case

Landau damping of dust acoustic solitary waves in nonthermal plasmas

Dust acoustic (DA) solitary and shock structures have been investigated under the influence of Landau damping in a dusty plasma containing two temperature nonthermal ions. Motivated by the observations of Geotail spacecraft that reported two-temperature ion population in the Earth's magnetosphere, we have investigated the effect of resonant wave-particle interactions on DA nonlinear structures. The KdV equation with an additional Landau damping term is derived and its analytical solution is presented. The solution has the form of a soliton whose amplitude decreases with time. Further, we have illustrated the influence of Landau damping and nonthermality of the ions on DA shock structures by a numerical solution of the Landau damping modified KdV equation. The study of the time evolution of shock waves suggests that an initial shock-like pulse forms an oscillatory shock at later times due to the balance of nonlinearity, dispersion and disspation due to Landau damping. The findings of the present investigation may be useful in understanding the properties of nonlinear structures in the presence of Landau damping in dusty plasmas containing two temperature ions obeying nonthermal distribution such as in the Earth's magnetotail

Generation of ELF waves during HF heating of the ionosphere at midlatitudes

Modulated high frequency radio frequency heating of the ionospheric F-region produces a local modulation of the electron temperature, and the resulting pressure gradient gives rise to a diamagnetic current. The oscillations of the diamagnetic current excite hydromagnetic waves in the ELF range that propagate away from the heated region. The generation of the waves in the 2 - 10 Hz range by a modulated heating in the midlatitude ionosphere is studied using numerical simulations of a collisional Hall-magnetohydrodynamic model. To model the plasma processes in the midlatitude ionosphere the Earth's dipole magnetic field and typical ionospheric plasma parameters are used. As the hydromagnetic waves propagate away from the heated region in the F-region, the varying plasma conditions lead to changes in their characteristics. Magnetosonic waves generated in the heating region and propagating down to the E-region, where the Hall conductivity is dominant, excite oscillating Hall currents that produce shear Alfvén waves propagating along the field lines into the magnetosphere, where they propagate as the electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) and whistler waves. The EMIC waves propagate to the ion cyclotron resonance layer in the magnetosphere, where they are absorbed

Electrostatic electron cyclotron instabilities near the upper hybrid layer due to electron ring distributions

A theoretical study is presented of the electrostatic electron cyclotron instability involving Bernstein modes in a magnetized plasma. The presence of a tenuous thermal ring distribution in a Maxwellian plasma decreases the frequency of the upper hybrid branch of the electron Bernstein mode until it merges with the nearest lower branch with a resulting instability. The instability occurs when the upper hybrid frequency is somewhat above the third, fourth, and higher electron cyclotron harmonics, and gives rise to a narrow spectrum of waves around the electron cyclotron harmonic nearest to the upper hybrid frequency. For a tenuous cold ring distribution together with a Maxwellian distribution an instability can take place also near the second electron cyclotron harmonic. Noise-free Vlasov simulations are used to assess the theoretical linear growth-rates and frequency spectra, and to study the nonlinear evolution of the instability. The relevance of the results to laboratory and ionospheric heating experiments is discussed

High-quality ion beams by irradiating a nano-structured target with a petawatt laser pulse

We present a novel laser based ion acceleration scheme, where a petawatt circularly polarized laser pulse is shot on an ultra-thin (nano-scale) double-layer target. Our scheme allows the production of high-quality light ion beams with both energy and angular dispersion controllable by the target properties. We show that extraction of all electrons from the target by radiation pressure can lead to a very effective two step acceleration process for light ions if the target is designed correctly. Relativistic protons should be obtainable with pulse powers of a few petawatt. Careful analytical modeling yields estimates for characteristic beam parameters and requirements on the laser pulse quality, in excellent agreement with one and two-dimensional Particle-in Cell simulations.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, accepted in New. J. Phy

Photon orbital angular momentum in a plasma vortex

We study theoretically the exchange of angular momentum between a photon beam and a plasma vortex, and demonstrate the possible excitation of photon angular momentum states in a plasma. This can be relevant to laboratory and space plasma diagnostics; radio astronomy self-calibration; and generating photon angular momentum beams. A static plasma perturbation with helical structure, and a rotating plasma vortex are studied in detail and a comparison between these two cases, and their relevance to the physical nature of photon OAM, is established.Comment: 4 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Photon Orbital Angular Momentum and Mass in a Plasma Vortex

We analyse the Anderson-Higgs mechanism of photon mass acquisition in a plasma and study the contribution to the mass from the orbital angular momentum acquired by a beam of photons when it crosses a spatially structured charge distribution. To this end we apply Proca-Maxwell equations in a static plasma with a particular spatial distribution of free charges, notably a plasma vortex, that is able to impose orbital angular momentum (OAM) onto light. In addition to the mass acquisition of the conventional Anderson-Higgs mechanism, we find that the photon acquires an additional mass from the OAM and that this mass reduces the Proca photon mass.Comment: Four pages, no figures. Error corrections, improved notation, refined derivation