Developing Pulsed Power Driven Turbulent Reconnection Platforms

本研究的目的是开发一种新的实验平台，用于研究磁化等离子体中的磁重联。磁化等离子体是一种由带电粒子组成的气体，它被磁场渗透。地球可以被认为是一个被太阳风包围的航天器，太阳风是太阳喷出的高温等离子体的漩涡海洋。地球磁场通常会保护我们免受太阳风的影响，但强烈的太阳风暴可能会突破并对用于通信和导航的轨道卫星造成重大损害，甚至可能破坏地球表面的电网和其他基础设施。预测这些破坏性的太阳风暴是一个持续不断的挑战，需要详细了解一个称为磁重联的过程，这个过程使这些风暴能够从太阳表面爆炸性地爆发。利用该奖项支持的新的专用实验室实验更好地理解磁重联，将提高我们对这些破坏性风暴进行建模和预测的能力。磁重联和湍流是基本相关的过程-重联层中的不稳定性驱动湍流级联，而这种湍流反过来又有效地在越来越小的范围内驱动重联。在实验室研究湍流重联层是一项突出的挑战，需要创造和维持热等离子体，以及新的诊断方法来解决广泛的空间尺度。该奖项将使用一种新的脉冲功率驱动的实验平台来研究产生湍流重联层的不同方法，目的是了解湍流如何通过应用于天体物理等离子体以及使用磁化的高能量密度等离子体的新型聚变实验来提高重联率。一个成功的平台将使人们能够进入一种独特的磁化等离子体湍流制度，从而洞察到现代等离子体湍流理论中重要的悬而未决的问题：临界平衡的存在，在小尺度上从磁流体动力学到动力学制度的转变，以及电子和离子之间能量的不均匀分配。该奖项是在能源部国家核安全管理局的支持下颁发的。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。

The objective of this research is to develop a new experimental platforms for studying magnetic reconnection in a magnetized plasma, a gas of electrically charged particles permeated by magnetic fields. The Earth can be thought of as a spacecraft surrounded by the solar wind, a swirling sea of hot plasma ejected from the Sun. The Earth's magnetic field usually protects us from this solar wind, but intense solar storms can break through and cause significant damage to the orbiting satellites used for communication and navigation, and potentially even damage power grids and other infrastructure on the Earth's surface. Predicting these damaging solar storms is an ongoing challenge, and involves a detailed understanding of a process called magnetic reconnection, which enables these storms to explosively erupt from the Sun's surface. Better understanding of magnetic reconnection using new dedicated laboratory experiments supported by this award will improve our ability to model and forecast these damaging storms.Magnetic reconnection and turbulence are fundamentally linked processes - instabilities in the reconnection layer drive a turbulent cascade, and this turbulence in turn efficiently drives reconnection at smaller and smaller scales. Studying turbulent reconnection layers in the laboratory is an outstanding challenge, requiring hot plasmas to be created and sustained, as well as new diagnostics to resolve a wide range of spatial scales. This award will use a new pulsed-power driven experimental platform to study different methods of producing a turbulent reconnection layer, with the goal of understanding how turbulence enhances the reconnection rate with applications to astrophysical plasmas as well as novel fusion experiments using magnetized high-energy-density plasmas. A successful platform will enable access to a unique regime of magnetized plasma turbulence, offering insight into important open questions in modern theories of plasma turbulence: the existence of critical balance, the transition from the magnetohydrodynamic to kinetic regime at small length scales, and the uneven partition of energy between the electrons and ions. This award is made with support from the National Nuclear Security Administration within the Department of Energy.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.