A New Approach to Charged Particle Slowing Down and Dispersion
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
The process by which super-thermal ions slow down against background Coulomb potentials arises in many fields of study. In particular, this is one of the main mechanisms by which the mass and energy from the reaction products of fusion reactions is deposited back into the background. Many of these fields are characterized by length and time scales that are the same magnitude as the range and duration of the trajectory of these particles, before they thermalize into the background. This requires numerical simulation of this slowing down process through numerically integrating the velocities and energies of these particles. This paper first presents a simple introduction to the required plasma physics, followed by the description of the numerical integration used to integrate a beam of particles. This algorithm is unique in that it combines in an integrated manner both a second-order integration of the slowing down with the particle beam dispersion. These two processes are typically computed in isolation from each other. A simple test problem of a beam of alpha particles slowing down against an inert background of deuterium and tritium with varying properties of both the beam and the background illustrate the utility of the algorithm. This is followed by conclusions and appendices. The appendices define the notation, units, and several useful identities.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-07NA27344; W-7405-Eng-48
- OSTI ID:
- 1248284
- Report Number(s):
- LLNL-TR-686862
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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