EAGER: Radiatively Cooled Magnetic Reconnection on Z

EAGER：Z 上的辐射冷却磁重联

• 批准号: 2213898
• 负责人: Jack Hare
• 金额: $ 21.8万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-05-01 至 2025-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2213898&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Radiatively; Cooled; Magnetic; Reconnection

This award will support experiments to study radiatively cooled magnetic reconnection, a new frontier of fundamental plasma physics which is important for understanding extreme astrophysical objects. Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous process throughout the Universe, which rearranges the topology of the magnetic fields which bind plasmas, and converts magnetic energy to kinetic and thermal energy. In environments with strong radiative cooling, such as around pulsars or in the coronae of black holes, efficient radiative loss may strongly effect the plasma dynamics leading to radiative cooling instabilities. Understanding this radiative collapse process is an outstanding issue in theory, simulation, experiment, and observation of magnetic reconnection under extreme conditions.The experiments supported by this award will use the largest pulsed-power facility in the world, the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories, to open up a new frontier in fundamental laboratory astrophysics: strongly radiatively cooled magnetic reconnection. Pulsed-power uses intense currents to convert initially solid targets into hot, dense, magnetized plasmas, and a pulsed-power driven reconnection platform has recently been developed. These plasmas are inherently in rough equipartition, with significant contributions to the pressure balance from the magnetic, thermal and kinetic pressures, a situation which occurs in many astrophysical plasmas. The research team will scale this platform from 1 MA peak current, university scale facilities to the Z machine which drives over 25 MA of current. Scaling laws predict 100,000 times stronger radiative cooling on Z than in previous experiments, which will lead to an entirely new and unexplored regime of astrophysically relevant magnetic reconnection studies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项将支持研究辐射冷却磁重联的实验，这是基础等离子体物理学的一个新前沿，对于理解极端天体物理很重要。磁重联是整个宇宙中普遍存在的一个过程，它会重新排列束缚等离子体的磁场的拓扑结构，并将磁能转换为动能和热能。在强辐射冷却环境中，例如在脉冲星周围或在黑洞的日冕中，有效的辐射损失可能会强烈影响等离子体动力学，导致辐射冷却不稳定性。了解这种辐射坍塌过程是极端条件下磁重联理论、模拟、实验和观测的一个突出问题。该奖项支持的实验将使用世界上最大的脉冲功率设备--桑迪亚国家实验室的Z机器，开辟基础实验室天体物理学的一个新前沿：强辐射冷却磁重联。脉冲功率使用强电流将最初的固体目标转化为热的、致密的、磁化的等离子体，最近开发了一种脉冲功率驱动的重联平台。这些等离子体本质上是粗略均分的，磁压、热压和动压对压力平衡的贡献很大，这种情况在许多天体物理等离子体中都存在。研究团队将把这个平台从大学规模的1毫安峰值电流扩展到驱动超过25毫安电流的Z机器。标度定律预测，Z上的辐射冷却强度是之前实验的100,000倍，这将导致一种全新的、未经探索的天体物理相关磁重联研究制度。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Simulations of radiatively cooled magnetic reconnection driven by pulsed power

• DOI: 10.1017/s0022377824000448
• 发表时间: 2024-01
• 期刊: Journal of Plasma Physics
• 影响因子: 2.5
• 作者: R. Datta;Aidan Crilly;J. Chittenden;Simran Chowdhry;K. Chandler;N. Chaturvedi;C. Myers;Will Fox