Reconstruction of plasma density profiles by measuring spectra of radiation emitted from oscillating plasma dipoles

We suggest a new method for characterising non-uniform density distributions of plasma by measuring the spectra of radiation emitted from a localised plasma dipole oscillator excited by colliding electromagnetic pulses. The density distribution can be determined by scanning the collision point in space. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations demonstrate the reconstruction of linear and nonlinear density profiles corresponding to laser-produced plasma. The method can be applied to a wide range of plasma, including fusion and low temperature plasmas. It overcomes many of the disadvantages of existing methods that only yield average densities along the path of probe pulses, such as interferometry and spectroscopy

Suppression of coherent synchrotron radiation induced emittance growth during electron-beam injection into plasma wakefields

Coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) is a collective effect that mainly occurs when the trajectory of an electron beam is bent in a dipole magnet. It affects the electron beam by distorting the phase space along its slice distribution, which leads to emittance growth. Therefore, CSR should be suppressed to transport electron beams without further degradation of the emittance. In linear optics, CSR-induced emittance can be suppressed by controlling the Twiss parameters along the electron-beam transfer line. However, owing to some physical constraints, transfer-line optics may be governed by higher-order terms in the transfer map, and the use of a sextupole magnet to suppress these terms would be very challenging for low-energy spread and low-emittance beams. Therefore, without using a sextupole magnet, we estimate the region of the Twiss parameters where the first-order terms are dominant along the transfer line by introducing chromatic amplitude. In this region, we can apply the suppression condition that is valid in a linear matrix system. This minimization of the emittance growth becomes even more important when the electron-beam transfer line is used for external injection into a plasma wakefield because mismatched beam conditions could induce an additional increase in the emittance during the acceleration. In this paper, we discuss a method of emittance-growth minimization driven by the CSR effect along the transfer line, which is particularly used for electron-beam injection into plasma wakefields. In addition, using the particle-in-cell simulation, we investigate the evolution of electron beam parameters during the acceleration through plasma wakefields in the presence of the CSR effect on the electron beam. We confirm that the beam emittance growth is minimized when the CSR effect is properly controlled. Otherwise, it is found that 11%?32% emittance growths by the CSR effect along the transfer line lead to additional 20%?40% increase of the maximum slice emittance

A STUDY OF TURBULENCE-DRIVEN INWARD MOMENTUM FLUX & CONSTRUCTION OF A DIFFERENCE SCHEME FOR FOKKER-PLANCK-LANDAU OPERATOR

Momentum transport driven by microinstability is studied via analytic theories, gyrokinetic simulations, and experimental data analysis. A scenario for rotation profile evolution is constructed based on experimental observation that parallel flow initiates at edge region and penetrates into core region of tokamak [1]. In particular, turbulent diffusion and inward convective pinch are studied according to this scenario. For study of convective momentum pinch, toroidal ion temperature gradient mode near marginal stability is examined in kinetic limit. It is found from quasilinear estimation that the inward turbulent equipartition momentum pinch remains as the most robust part of pinch. In addition, it is found that ion temperature gradient driven momentum pinch is inward for typical parameters, while ion density gradient driven momentum pinch is outward. It is shown by theoretical formulas and experimental data analysis that momentum pinch velocity is sensitive to the electron to ion temperature ratio. For study of diffusive momentum transport, parallel shear flow instability is studied in fluid limit. Diffusion coefficient using mixing length estimate from nonlocal theory reveals that it has a strong dependence on the parallel flow shear and is mainly carried by fluctuations in short wavelength regime. Gyrokinetic simulation of collisionless parallel shear flow instability shows that the analytic prediction of diffusion coefficient is comparable to numerical values in the linear phase of the simulations. In the nonlinear phase, fluctuation energy gets transferred to the long wavelength regime. A two-dimensional, uniform velocity-grid based solver for the nonlinear Fokker-Planck-Landau (FPL) collision operator has been developed in the limit of strong magnetic field. The conservative and entropy increasing semidiscretized numerical scheme for the isotropic FPL equation by C. Buet et al. (2002) has been extended to 2D velocity space. A Picard fixed point method is used for semi-implicit time advance. One time evaluation of interpolation coefficients for probability distribution function is introduced so that numerical equilibrium is achieved with Maxwellian. However, positivity property is sacrificed at the saving of computational costs. In addition, a highly practical method is suggested to apply the velocity-grid based collision solver to particle-in-cell code