29,631 research outputs found
High voltage characteristics of the electrodynamic tether and the generation of power and propulsion
The Tethered Satellite System (TSS) will deploy and retrieve a satellite from the Space Shuttle orbiter with a tether of up to 100 km in length attached between the satellite and the orbiter. The characteristics of the TSS which are related to high voltages, electrical currents, energy storage, power, and the generation of plasma waves are described. A number of specific features of the tether system of importance in assessing the operational characteristics of the electrodynamic TSS are identified
Damping of Electron Density Structures and Implications for Interstellar Scintillation
The forms of electron density structures in kinetic Alfven wave turbulence
are studied in connection with scintillation. The focus is on small scales cm where the Kinetic Alfv\'en wave (KAW) regime is active in
the interstellar medium. MHD turbulence converts to a KAW cascade, starting at
10 times the ion gyroradius and continuing to smaller scales. These scales are
inferred to dominate scintillation in the theory of Boldyrev et al. From
numerical solutions of a decaying kinetic Alfv\'en wave turbulence model,
structure morphology reveals two types of localized structures, filaments and
sheets, and shows that they arise in different regimes of resistive and
diffusive damping. Minimal resistive damping yields localized current filaments
that form out of Gaussian-distributed initial conditions. When resistive
damping is large relative to diffusive damping, sheet-like structures form. In
the filamentary regime, each filament is associated with a non-localized
magnetic and density structure, circularly symmetric in cross section. Density
and magnetic fields have Gaussian statistics (as inferred from Gaussian-valued
kurtosis) while density gradients are strongly non-Gaussian, more so than
current. This enhancement of non-Gaussian statistics in a derivative field is
expected since gradient operations enhance small-scale fluctuations. The
enhancement of density gradient kurtosis over current kurtosis is not obvious,
yet it suggests that modest fluctuation levels in electron density may yield
large scintillation events during pulsar signal propagation in the interstellar
medium. In the sheet regime the same statistical observations hold, despite the
absence of localized filamentary structures. Probability density functions are
constructed from statistical ensembles in both regimes, showing clear formation
of long, highly non-Gaussian tails
Radio-wave propagation in the non-Gaussian interstellar medium
Radio waves propagating from distant pulsars in the interstellar medium
(ISM), are refracted by electron density inhomogeneities, so that the intensity
of observed pulses fluctuates with time. The theory relating the observed pulse
time-shapes to the electron-density correlation function has developed for 30
years, however, two puzzles have remained. First, observational scaling of
pulse broadening with the pulsar distance is anomalously strong; it is
consistent with the standard model only when non-uniform statistics of electron
fluctuations along the line of sight are assumed. Second, the observed pulse
shapes are consistent with the standard model only when the scattering material
is concentrated in a narrow slab between the pulsar and the Earth.
We propose that both paradoxes are resolved at once if one assumes stationary
and uniform, but non-Gaussian statistics of the electron-density distribution.
Such statistics must be of Levy type, and the propagating ray should exhibit a
Levy flight. We propose that a natural realization of such statistics may be
provided by the interstellar medium with random electron-density
discontinuities. We develop a theory of wave propagation in such a non-Gaussian
random medium, and demonstrate its good agreement with observations. The
qualitative introduction of the approach and the resolution of the
anomalous-scaling paradox was presented earlier in [PRL 91, 131101 (2003); ApJ
584, 791 (2003)].Comment: 27 pages, changes to match published versio
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