The maser instability associated with the loss-cone distribution has been widely invoked to explain the radio bursts observed in the astrophysical plasma environment, such as aurora and corona. In the laboratory plasma of a tokamak, events reminiscent of these radio bursts have also been frequently observed as an electron cyclotron emission (ECE) burst in the microwave range ($\mathrm{\sim }2{f_{\textrm{ce}}}$ near the last closed flux surface) during transient magnetohydrodynamic events. These bursts have a short duration of ~10 μs and display a radiation spectrum corresponding to a radiation temperature ${T_{e,\textrm{rad}}}$ of over $30\ \textrm{keV}$ while the edge thermal electron temperature ${T_e}$ is only in the range of $1\ \textrm{keV}$. Suprathermal electrons can be generated through magnetic reconnection, and a loss-cone distribution can be generated through open stochastic field lines in the magnetic mirror of the near-edge region of a tokamak plasma. Radiation modelling shows that a sharp distribution gradient $\partial f/\partial {v_ \bot } > 0$ at the loss-cone boundary can cause a negative absorption of ECE radiation through the maser instability. The negative absorption then amplifies the radiation so that the microwave intensity is significantly stronger than the thermal value. The significant ${T_{e,\textrm{rad}}}$ from the simulations suggests the potential role of the loss-cone maser instability in generating the ECE burst in a tokamak.

A collisionless shock structure results from the nonlinear interaction between charged particles and electromagnetic fields. Yet, a collisionless shock is globally governed by the mass, momentum and energy conservation requirements. A stable shock structure must ensure that the fluxes of the conserved quantities are constant on average, and, therefore, is determined by this necessity. Here, we study an observed high upstream temperature high Mach number shock and show that the conservation laws cannot be fulfilled unless the shock is spatially inhomogeneous along the shock front and time-dependent.

We perform experiments in the Large Plasma Device at the University of California, Los Angeles, studying how different end-electrode biasing schemes modify the radial potential profile in the machine. We impose biasing profiles of different polarities and gradient signs on a set of five concentric electrodes placed 12 m downstream from the plasma source. We find that imposing concave-down profiles (negative potential radial gradient) on the electrodes creates radial potential profiles halfway up the plasma column that are comparable to those imposed on the electrodes and a few electron temperature in height, regardless of the biasing polarity. On the other hand, imposing concave-up profiles (positive potential radial gradient) leads to non-monotonic radial potential profiles. This observation can be explained by the current drawn through the electrodes and the parallel plasma resistivity, highlighting their important role in controlling the rotation of plasma. Concave-down plasma potential profiles, obtained by drawing electrons on the axis, are predicted to drive azimuthal drift velocities that can approach significant fractions of the ion sound speed in the central region of the plasma column.

A fusion neutron source (FNS) based on the gas-dynamic trap (GDT, Budker Institute, Novosibirsk) is considered for confinement of two-species plasma heated by neutral beam injection in a regime where the fast ion distribution function is far from Maxwellian. Kinetic instabilities are expected to develop in this regime, and in this paper we investigate the ion-cyclotron instability evolving in moderate densities of pure hydrogen and mixed deuterium–hydrogen target plasmas. The properties of the studied unstable mode, such as its azimuthal wavenumbers, propagation direction and its being affected by changes in the bulk plasma density and composition, allow us to identify it as the drift cyclotron loss cone (DCLC) instability. This mode scatters fast ions and thereby leads to drops in diamagnetic flux signals and increases longitudinal energy and particle losses, with the average energy of the lost ions estimated to be far above the temperature of warm Maxwellian ions. Our interpretation is that the unstable wave grows due to interaction with the fast ions located near the loss cone in the velocity space and scatters them. Applying the method of suppressing the DCLC instability by filling the loss cone with warm plasma, we have determined the values of plasma density and deuterium percentage that allow us to suppress the DCLC instability in the GDT. These findings justify using mixed bulk plasmas in fusion neutron source operation.

Simulating plasma physics on quantum computers is difficult because most problems of interest are nonlinear, but quantum computers are not naturally suitable for nonlinear operations. In weakly nonlinear regimes, plasma problems can be modelled as wave–wave interactions. In this paper, we develop a quantization approach to convert nonlinear wave–wave interaction problems to Hamiltonian simulation problems. We demonstrate our approach using two qubits on a superconducting device. Unlike a photonic device, a superconducting device does not naturally have the desired interactions in its native Hamiltonian. Nevertheless, Hamiltonian simulations can still be performed by decomposing required unitary operations into native gates. To improve experimental results, we employ a range of error-mitigation techniques. Apart from readout error mitigation, we use randomized compilation to transform undiagnosed coherent errors into well-behaved stochastic Pauli channels. Moreover, to compensate for stochastic noise, we rescale exponentially decaying probability amplitudes using rates measured from cycle benchmarking. We carefully consider how different choices of product-formula algorithms affect the overall error and show how a trade-off can be made to best utilize limited quantum resources. This study provides an example of how plasma problems may be solved on near-term quantum computing platforms.

Between a plasma and a solid target lies a positively charged sheath of several Debye lengths $\lambda _{D}$ width, typically much smaller than the characteristic length scale $L$ of the main plasma. This scale separation implies that the asymptotic limit $\epsilon = \lambda _{D} / L \rightarrow 0$ is useful to solve for the plasma-sheath system. In this limit, the Bohm criterion must be satisfied at the sheath entrance. A new derivation of the kinetic criterion, admitting a general ion velocity distribution, is presented. It is proven that, for $\epsilon \rightarrow 0$, the distribution of the velocity component normal to the target, $v_x$, and its first derivative must vanish for $|v_x| \rightarrow 0$ at the sheath entrance. These two conditions can be subsumed into a third integral one after it is integrated by parts twice. A subsequent interchange of the limits $\epsilon \rightarrow 0$ and $|v_x| \rightarrow 0$ is invalid, leading to a divergence which underlies the misconception that the criterion gives undue importance to slow ions.

In magnetic confinement fusion devices close to axisymmetry, such as tokamaks, a key element is the winding profile of the magnetic field lines, or its inverse, the safety profile $q=q_{\boldsymbol {B}}$. A corresponding profile, $q_{\boldsymbol {J}}$, can be defined for the current density field lines. Ampère's law relates any mode of current perturbation $\delta \boldsymbol {J}_{m,n}$ with a mode of magnetic perturbation $\delta \boldsymbol {B}_{m,n}$. It is shown that the knowledge of the pair $(q_{\boldsymbol {B}},q_{\boldsymbol {J}})$ allows us then to characterize the resonant, or non-resonant, nature of the modes for both the magnetic and current density field lines. The expression of $q_{\boldsymbol {J}}$ in the flux coordinate is derived. Including this calculation in real-time Grad–Shafranov equilibrium reconstruction codes would yield a comprehensive view of the magnetics. The monitoring of the pair $(q_{\boldsymbol {B}},q_{\boldsymbol {J}})$ would then allow us to investigate the role played by the resonant modes for the current density, that are current filamentary modes, in the plasma small-scale turbulence. By driving the magnetic and current density profiles apart so that the images of $q_{\boldsymbol {B}}$ and $q_{\boldsymbol {J}}$ are disjoint, these filamentary modes would not impact the magnetic field topology, being not associated with magnetic islands but with non-resonant magnetic modes. It remains to be explored to what extent such a configuration, where the spectrum of tiny current density filaments produces a spectrum of magnetic modes that has practically no effect on heat transport, is beneficial.

The propagation of electromagnetic waves in a linearly varying index of refraction is a fundamental problem in wave physics, being relevant in fusion science for describing certain wave-based heating and diagnostic schemes. Here, an exact solution is obtained for a given incoming wavefield specified on the boundary transverse to the direction of inhomogeneity by performing a spectral, rather than asymptotic, matching. Two case studies are then presented: a Gaussian beam at oblique incidence and a speckled wavefield at normal incidence. For the Gaussian beam, it is shown that when the waist $W$ is sufficiently large, oblique incidence manifests simply as rigid translation and focal shift of the corresponding diffraction pattern at normal incidence. The destruction of the hyperbolic umbilic caustic (corresponding to a critically focused beam) as $W$ is reduced is then demonstrated. The caustic disappears once $W \lesssim \delta _a \sqrt {L}$ ($L$ being the medium length scale normalized by the Airy skin depth $\delta _a$), at which point the wave behaviour is increasingly described by Airy functions, but experiences less focusing as a result. To maximize the intensity of a launched Gaussian beam at a turning point, one should therefore minimize the imaginary part of the launched complex beam parameter while having the real part satisfy critical focusing. For the speckled wavefield, it is shown that the transverse speckle pattern only couples to the Airy longitudinal pattern when the coupling parameter $\eta = \sqrt {L}/f_{\#}$ is large, with $f_{\#}$ being the f-number of the launching aperture. When $\eta \ll 1$, a reduced description of the total wavefield can be obtained by simply multiplying the incoming speckle pattern with the Airy swelling.

The magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations, as a collisional fluid model that remains in local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE), have long been used to describe turbulence in myriad space and astrophysical plasmas. Yet, the vast majority of these plasmas, from the solar wind to the intracluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters, are only weakly collisional at best, meaning that significant deviations from LTE are not only possible but common. Recent studies have demonstrated that the kinetic physics inherent to this weakly collisional regime can fundamentally transform the evolution of such plasmas across a wide range of scales. Here, we explore the consequences of pressure anisotropy and Larmor-scale instabilities for collisionless, $\beta \gg 1$, turbulence, focusing on the role of a self-organizational effect known as ‘magneto-immutability’. We describe this self-organization analytically through a high-$\beta$, reduced ordering of the Chew–Goldberger–Low-MHD (CGL-MHD) equations, finding that it is a robust inertial-range effect that dynamically suppresses magnetic-field-strength fluctuations, anisotropic-pressure stresses and dissipation due to heat fluxes. As a result, the turbulent cascade of Alfvénic fluctuations continues below the putative viscous scale to form a robust, nearly conservative, MHD-like inertial range. These findings are confirmed numerically via Landau-fluid CGL-MHD turbulence simulations that employ a collisional closure to mimic the effects of microinstabilities. We find that microinstabilities occupy a small (${\sim }5\,\%$) volume-filling fraction of the plasma, even when the pressure anisotropy is driven strongly towards its instability thresholds. We discuss these results in the context of recent predictions for ion-vs-electron heating in low-luminosity accretion flows and observations implying suppressed viscosity in ICM turbulence.

Where and under what conditions the transfer of energy between electromagnetic fields and particles takes place in the solar wind remains an open question. We investigate the conditions that promote the growth of kinetic instabilities predicted by linear theory to infer how turbulence and temperature-anisotropy-driven instabilities are interrelated. Using a large dataset from Solar Orbiter, we introduce the radial rate of strain, a novel measure computed from single-spacecraft data, which we interpret as a proxy for the double-adiabatic strain rate. The solar wind exhibits high absolute values of the radial rate of strain at locations with large temperature anisotropy. We measure the kurtosis and skewness of the radial rate of strain from the statistical moments to show that it is non-Gaussian for unstable intervals and increasingly intermittent at smaller scales with a power-law scaling. We conclude that the velocity field fluctuations in the solar wind contribute to the presence of temperature anisotropy sufficient to create potentially unstable conditions.

The response tensor is derived for a relativistically streaming, strongly magnetized, one-dimensional Jüttner distribution of electrons and positrons, referred to as a pulsar plasma. This is used to produce a general treatment of wave dispersion in a pulsar plasma. Specifically, relativistic streaming, the spread in Lorentz factors in a pulsar rest frame and cyclotron resonances are taken into account. Approximations to the response tensor are derived by making approximations to relativistic plasma dispersion functions appearing in the general form of the response tensor. The cold-plasma limit, the highly relativistic limit and limits related to cyclotron resonances are considered. The theory developed in this paper has applications to generalized Faraday rotation in pulsars and magnetars.

Free normal-flow (NF) conditions at the plasma boundary are shown to be essential for three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations to agree with linear stability theory. A comparative verification study is presented between two different formulations of the boundary conditions (BCs) for velocity perturbations: (i) fully consistent free NF implementation and (ii) fixed NF formulation, neglecting flow perturbations at the numerical boundary. Numerical results are compared with consolidated figures of merit from the linear theory of external kink modes. We consider two classes of initial equilibria presenting different numerical challenges: a uniform current channel surrounded by pure vacuum and a shaped Wesson-like equilibrium, with smooth (polynomial) radial dependency. Only the fully consistent free NF formulation is invariably accurate in modelling the plasma interface at the numerical boundary, without the need of enforcing a pseudovacuum region at the edge of the simulation domain, as in most analogous past studies. This study employs the cylindrical code SPECYL (Cappello & Biskamp, Nucl. Fusion, vol. 36, no. 5, 1996, p. 571) that solves a full-MHD model without pressure gradients, whose fully consistent resistive wall module with free NF BCs was recently successfully verified against the independent code PIXIE3D (Spinicci et al., AIP Adv., vol. 13, no. 9, 2023, p. 095111).

In the radiation hydrodynamic simulations used to design inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and pulsed power experiments, nonlinear radiation diffusion tends to dominate CPU time. This raises the interesting question of whether a quantum algorithm can be found for nonlinear radiation diffusion which provides a quantum speedup. Recently, such a quantum algorithm was introduced based on a quantum algorithm for solving systems of nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) which provides a quadratic quantum speedup. Here, we apply this quantum PDE (QPDE) algorithm to the problem of a non-equilibrium Marshak wave propagating through a cold, semi-infinite, optically thick target, where the radiation and matter fields are not assumed to be in local thermodynamic equilibrium. The dynamics is governed by a coupled pair of nonlinear PDEs which are solved using the QPDE algorithm, as well as two standard PDE solvers: (i) Python's py-pde solver; and (ii) the KULL ICF simulation code developed at Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory. We compare the simulation results obtained using the QPDE algorithm and the standard PDE solvers and find excellent agreement.

Prompted by the relevant problem of temperature inversion (i.e. gradient of density anti-correlated to the gradient of temperature) in astrophysics, we introduce a novel method to model a gravitationally confined multi-component collisionless plasma in contact with a fluctuating thermal boundary. We focus on systems with anti-correlated (inverted) density and temperature profiles, with applications to solar physics. The dynamics of the plasma is analytically described via the coupling of an appropriated coarse-grained distribution function and a temporally coarse-grained Vlasov dynamics. We derive a stationary solution of the system and predict the inverted density and temperature profiles of the two species for scenarios relevant for the corona. We validate our method by comparing the analytical results with kinetic numerical simulations of the plasma dynamics in the context of the two-species Hamiltonian mean-field model. Finally, we apply our theoretical framework to the problem of the temperature inversion in the solar corona, obtaining density and temperature profiles in remarkably good agreement with the observations.

We derive an advanced surrogate model for predicting turbulent transport at the edge of tokamaks driven by electron temperature gradient (ETG) modes. Our derivation is based on a recently developed sensitivity-driven sparse grid interpolation approach for uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis at scale, which informs the set of parameters that define the surrogate model as a scaling law. Our model reveals that ETG-driven electron heat flux is influenced by the safety factor $q$, electron beta $\beta _e$ and normalized electron Debye length $\lambda _D$, in addition to well-established parameters such as the electron temperature and density gradients. To assess the trustworthiness of our model's predictions beyond training, we compute prediction intervals using bootstrapping. The surrogate model's predictive power is tested across a wide range of parameter values, including within-distribution testing parameters (to verify our model) as well as out-of-bounds and out-of-distribution testing (to validate the proposed model). Overall, validation efforts show that our model competes well with, or can even outperform, existing scaling laws in predicting ETG-driven transport.

Electron heating and acceleration in collisionless shocks is a long-standing problem. Rapid isotropization of heated electrons cannot be explained solely by the cross-shock potential. In addition, the macroscopic cross-shock potential prevents efficient reflection and injection into the diffusive acceleration regime. Recent observations have shown that small-scale electric fields are present in the shock front, together with the large-scale cross-shock potential. These small-scale fields have been found also in the upstream and downstream regions. Electron heating in shocks is produced by the combined action of the large- and small-scale fields. The large-scale potential determines the energy transferred to the electrons. The small-scale electrostatic fields scatter electrons. Here we study the scattering of electrons on the typical waveforms, namely solitary bipolar spikes and wavepackets. The main effect is the generation of backstreaming electrons with large pitch angles. It is found that wavepackets are more efficient in electron reflection in the interaction of electrons both with a single spike and with multiple spikes.

A specific set of dimensionless plasma and turbulence parameters is introduced to characterize the nature of turbulence and its dissipation in weakly collisional space and astrophysical plasmas. Key considerations are discussed for the development of predictive models of the turbulent plasma heating that characterize the partitioning of dissipated turbulent energy between the ion and electron species and between the perpendicular and parallel degrees of freedom for each species. Identifying the kinetic physical mechanisms that govern the damping of the turbulent fluctuations is a critical first step in constructing such turbulent heating models. A set of ten general plasma and turbulence parameters are defined, and reasonable approximations along with the exploitation of existing scaling theories for magnetohydrodynamic turbulence are used to reduce this general set of ten parameters to just three parameters in the isotropic temperature case: the ion plasma beta, the ion-to-electron temperature ratio and the isotropic driving wavenumber. A critical step forward in this study is to identify the dependence of all of the proposed kinetic mechanisms for turbulent damping in terms of the same set of fundamental plasma and turbulence parameters. Analytical estimations of the scaling of each damping mechanism on these fundamental parameters are presented. The power of this approach is illustrated in the development of the first phase diagram for the turbulent damping mechanisms as a function of the ion plasma beta and isotropic driving wavenumber for unity ion-to-electron temperature ratio, showing the regions of this two-dimensional parameter space in which ion Landau and transit-time damping, electron Landau and transit-time damping, ion cyclotron damping, ion stochastic heating, collisionless magnetic reconnection and kinetic ‘viscous’ heating play a role in the damping of the turbulent fluctuations.

The paper considers the electron transport in toroidal systems taking into account relativistic effects for electrons. The treatment is based on the relativistic drift-kinetic equation with the thermodynamic equilibrium given by the relativistic Maxwell–Jüttner distribution function. The definition of relativistic fluxes is given in a classic-like form using the same set of thermodynamic forces as in the classical (non-relativistic) approach. Such a formulation allows us to apply the currently used non-relativistic solvers for calculation of relativistic mono-energetic transport coefficients. As an example, the procedure for calculating electron fluxes is proposed, in which relativistic effects are taken into account using the DKES code. The model can be easily implemented in various transport codes, developed for the non-relativistic limit, making them accurate also for hot plasmas with non-negligible relativistic effects.

Hot electrons produced by parametric instabilities can negatively affect the thermonuclear gain of a direct-drive inertial confinement fusion capsule. A Monte Carlo transport is coupled to the hydrodynamics MULTI-IFE code in order to study the hot electron transport in a high-gain target implosion. The thermonuclear energy produced by the directly driven implosion of a reference target drops from 27 MJ without hot electrons to 13.5 kJ when the hot electrons are taken into account. A clear relationship is established between the level of hot electrons produced and the degradation of the thermonuclear yield produced by the target. It is shown that adding a relatively short laser spike (shock ignition) to the main pulse restores the thermonuclear energy released by the implosion. Different shock-ignition windows are presented depending on the duration of the spike. It appears that the longer the duration of the spike, the lower the power required for shock ignition. Finally, a 300 ps-duration spike requires only 50 TW to restore a thermonuclear energy output of 20 MJ.

In this work we consider the problem of optimizing a stellarator subject to hard constraints on the design variables and physics properties of the equilibrium. We survey current numerical methods for handling these constraints, and summarize a number of methods from the wider optimization community that have not been used extensively for stellarator optimization thus far. We demonstrate the utility of new methods of constrained optimization by optimizing a quasi-axisymmetric stellarator for favourable physics properties while preventing strong shaping of the plasma boundary, which can be difficult to create with external current sources.