CAREER: Understanding of Neutral Particle Physics to Generate a Helicon Wave Driven High Density Laboratory Plasma

等离子体——物质的第四种状态——在宇宙中大量存在。等离子体被人类广泛应用于各种工业和科学应用，从食品包装的材料加工、医疗应用、汽车工业到下一代粒子加速器和新的空间推进系统。尽管等离子体在科学和社会经济方面具有广泛的重要性，但从K-12教育到大学水平，它是最少被提及的物理科学主题。美国国家科学基金会CAREER奖项目的中心目标是将前沿等离子体物理研究任务与严格的外展活动相结合，使等离子体物理作为现代工业社会发展和进步的重要物理科学领域更多地为公众所知。该奖项项目的核心研究工作是利用高效等离子体源（在本例中是螺旋波）产生和理解高密度等离子体状态。主动气体加注将作为一种克服这种等离子体配置的经验密度限制的方法进行探索，并将采用最先进的主动激光光谱学方法来测量中性粒子和电离的动力学。威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校工程物理系的等离子体物理实验室课程被用作教育和推广的中心元素。一个教师暑期班将与麦迪逊大都会学区合作开发，作为一个肥沃的环境，以促进基本等离子体物理方面的实施，作为现有高中课程的延伸。同时，这项工作将成为下一代教师的中心培训活动。两名研究生参与了这个中心拓展项目的开发和执行，将实验课程转变为等离子体物理的高级发现学习体验。

Plasma - the fourth state of matter - is of abundant presence in the universe. Plasmas are used by mankind in a broad variety of industrial and scientific applications, from material processing for food packaging, medical applications, and the car industry to next generation particle accelerators and new space propulsion systems. Even in spite of the broad importance of plasma for scientific andsocio-economical aspects, it is the least addressed physical science topic from K-12 education up to college level. The central goal of this CAREER award project of the National Science Foundation is combining a cutting edge plasma physics research mission with a rigorous outreach activity to make plasma physics more visible to the general public as an important field of physical sciences for the development and progress of modern industrial societies.The central research endeavor of this award project is the generation and understanding of high density plasma regimes using highly efficient plasma sources - in this case helicon waves. Active gas fueling will be explored as a method to overcome the empirical density limit found for such plasma configurations, and state-of-the-art methods of active laser spectroscopy will be employed to measure the dynamics of the neutral particles and of ionization. The Laboratory for Plasma Physics class in the Department of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin - Madison is employed as a central element for education and outreach. A teacher summer class will be developed in collaboration with the Madison Metropolitan School District as a fertilizing environment to foster implementation of basic plasma physics aspects as extensions to present high school curricula. This effort will be at the same time a central training activity for next generation faculty. Two graduate students are involved in the development and execution of this central outreach project, transforming the laboratory course into an advanced discovery learning experience on plasma physics.