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Weibel Instability
The Weibel instability is a plasma instability present in homogeneous or nearly homogeneous electromagnetic plasmas which possess an anisotropy in momentum (velocity) space. This anisotropy is most generally understood as two temperatures in different directions. Burton Fried showed that this instability can be understood more simply as the superposition of many counter-streaming beams. In this sense, it is like the two-stream instability except that the perturbations are electromagnetic and result in filamentation as opposed to electrostatic perturbations which would result in charge bunching. In the linear limit the instability causes exponential growth of electromagnetic fields in the plasma which help restore momentum space isotropy. In very extreme cases, the Weibel instability is related to one- or two-dimensional stream instabilities. Consider an electron-ion plasma in which the ions are fixed and the electrons are hotter in the y-direction than in x or z-direction. To ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plasma Instability
The stability of a plasma is an important consideration in the study of plasma physics. When a system containing a plasma is at equilibrium, it is possible for certain parts of the plasma to be disturbed by small perturbative forces acting on it. The stability of the system determines if the perturbations will grow, oscillate, or be damped out. In many cases, a plasma can be treated as a fluid and its stability analyzed with magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). MHD theory is the simplest representation of a plasma, so MHD stability is a necessity for stable devices to be used for nuclear fusion, specifically magnetic fusion energy. There are, however, other types of instabilities, such as velocity-space instabilities in magnetic mirrors and systems with beams. There are also rare cases of systems, e.g. the field-reversed configuration, predicted by MHD to be unstable, but which are observed to be stable, probably due to kinetic effects. Plasma instabilities Plasma instabilities can be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plasma (physics)
Plasma () 1, where \nu_ is the electron gyrofrequency and \nu_ is the electron collision rate. It is often the case that the electrons are magnetized while the ions are not. Magnetized plasmas are ''anisotropic'', meaning that their properties in the direction parallel to the magnetic field are different from those perpendicular to it. While electric fields in plasmas are usually small due to the plasma high conductivity, the electric field associated with a plasma moving with velocity \mathbf in the magnetic field \mathbf is given by the usual Lorentz force, Lorentz formula \mathbf = -\mathbf\times\mathbf, and is not affected by Debye shielding. Mathematical descriptions To completely describe the state of a plasma, all of the particle locations and velocities that describe the electromagnetic field in the plasma region would need to be written down. However, it is generally not practical or necessary to keep track of all the particles in a plasma. Therefore, plasma physicist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Two-stream Instability
The two-stream instability is a very common instability in plasma physics. It can be induced by an energetic particle stream injected in a plasma, or setting a current along the plasma so different species (ions and electrons) can have different drift velocities. The energy from the particles can lead to plasma wave excitation. Two-stream instability can arise from the case of two cold beams, in which no particles are resonant with the wave, or from two hot beams, in which there exist particles from one or both beams which are resonant with the wave. Two-stream instability is known in various limiting cases as beam-plasma instability, beam instability, or bump-on-tail instability. Dispersion relation in cold-beam limit Consider a cold, uniform, and unmagnetized plasma, where ions are stationary and the electrons have velocity v_0, that is, the reference frame is moving with the ion stream. Let the electrostatic waves be of the form: \mathbf_1 = \xi_1 \exp (kx - \omega t)\ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lorentz Force
In physics (specifically in electromagnetism) the Lorentz force (or electromagnetic force) is the combination of electric and magnetic force on a point charge due to electromagnetic fields. A particle of charge moving with a velocity in an electric field and a magnetic field experiences a force of \mathbf = q\,\mathbf + q\,\mathbf \times \mathbf (in SI unitsIn SI units, is measured in teslas (symbol: T). In Gaussian-cgs units, is measured in gauss (symbol: G). See e.g. )The -field is measured in amperes per metre (A/m) in SI units, and in oersteds (Oe) in cgs units. ). It says that the electromagnetic force on a charge is a combination of a force in the direction of the electric field proportional to the magnitude of the field and the quantity of charge, and a force at right angles to the magnetic field and the velocity of the charge, proportional to the magnitude of the field, the charge, and the velocity. Variations on this basic formula describe the magnetic force on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plasma Instabilities
The stability of a plasma is an important consideration in the study of plasma physics. When a system containing a plasma is at equilibrium, it is possible for certain parts of the plasma to be disturbed by small perturbative forces acting on it. The stability of the system determines if the perturbations will grow, oscillate, or be damped out. In many cases, a plasma can be treated as a fluid and its stability analyzed with magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). MHD theory is the simplest representation of a plasma, so MHD stability is a necessity for stable devices to be used for nuclear fusion, specifically magnetic fusion energy. There are, however, other types of instabilities, such as velocity-space instabilities in magnetic mirrors and systems with beams. There are also rare cases of systems, e.g. the field-reversed configuration, predicted by MHD to be unstable, but which are observed to be stable, probably due to kinetic effects. Plasma instabilities Plasma instabilities can b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
