Investigation of the Dynamics of Interacting Magnetized Plasmas Through Experiments and Extended MHD Modeling

该奖项支持一项关于磁化等离子体云（被磁场渗透的电子和离子电离气体）如何相互作用的研究。具有不同粒子密度的相互作用等离子体出现在各种各样的自然系统中，包括传播到星系间介质的天体物理喷流和太阳在背景太阳风中传播到地球的日冕物质抛射。此外，这种相互作用的等离子体可以在工程核聚变系统中找到，例如在托卡马克等离子体的燃料中，以及在激光驱动的惯性聚变系统中产生的壳材料射流中。在这个项目中，实验室规模的相互作用等离子体将在新墨西哥大学的一个基本等离子体科学设备中进行详细的研究。这些实验将辅以大规模的计算机模拟。该项目由物理系和促进竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）共同资助。虽然致密磁化等离子体在背景真空中传播的研究历史悠久，但这种结构在背景等离子体中传播的研究直到最近才开始。关于这些磁化等离子体相互作用的一些重要问题仍然存在，例如热量、粒子、磁通量或磁螺旋度如何被传输到背景区域的细节，以及这些系统如何自组织。本工作的目的是阐明高密度等离子体射流和气泡传播到低密度背景等离子体的详细等离子体和磁场动力学。这将通过控制厘米和微秒尺度的实验室实验和紧密耦合的磁流体动力学建模来完成。该项目将补充其他正在进行的实验，这些实验利用激光或脉冲动力驱动的射流在亚毫米和亚微秒尺度的等离子体上进行，在这些等离子体上测量的空间和时间保真度更有限。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports a study of how clouds of magnetized plasma - ionized gas of electrons and ions permeated by magnetic fields - interact with each other. Interacting plasmas with different particle densities occur in a wide variety of natural systems, including astrophysical jets propagating into the intergalactic medium and coronal mass ejections from the sun propagating toward earth in the background solar wind. Additionally, such interacting plasmas can be found in engineered nuclear fusion systems, such as in the fueling of tokamak plasmas and in jets of shell material generated in laser-driven inertial fusion systems. In this project, laboratory-scale interacting plasmas will be studied in detail in a basic plasma science device at the University of New Mexico. The experiments will be complemented by large-scale computer modeling. The project is jointly funded by the Division of Physics and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).Although there is a long history of studies of dense magnetized plasmas propagating into background vacuum, studies of propagation of such structures into background plasma began only relatively recently. A number of important questions remain about these magnetized plasma interactions, such as the details of how heat, particles, and magnetic flux or magnetic helicity are transported into background regions, and how such systems may self-organize. The goal of this work is to elucidate the detailed plasma and magnetic field dynamics of higher density plasma jets and bubbles propagating into lower density background plasma. This will be accomplished through controlled cm- and microsecond-scale laboratory experiments and closely coupled magnetohydrodynamic modeling. The project will complement other ongoing experiments that utilize laser- or pulsed power-driven jets on submillimeter- and sub microsecond-scale plasmas, where the spatial and temporal fidelity of measurements are more limited.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.