Spontaneous ion beam formation in the laboratory, space, and simulation
- Department of Physics, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia 26506 (United States)
- University of Tromsø, Tromsø (Norway)
- Department of Physics, University of Colorado–Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309 (United States)
- The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ (United Kingdom)
We present experimental evidence for the spontaneous formation of multiple double layers within a single divergent magnetic field structure. Downstream of the divergent magnetic field, multiple accelerated ion populations are observed. The similarity of the accelerated ion populations observed in these laboratory experiments to ion populations observed in the magnetosphere and in numerical simulations suggests that the observation of a complex ion velocity distribution alone is insufficient to distinguish between simple plasma expansion and magnetic reconnection. Further, the effective temperature of the aggregate ion population is significantly larger than the temperatures of the individual ion population components, suggesting that insufficiently resolved measurements could misidentify multiple beam creation as ion heating. Ions accelerated in randomly oriented electric fields that mimic heating would have an ion heating rate dependent on the ion charge and mass that is qualitatively consistent with recent experimental observations of ion heating during magnetic reconnection.
- OSTI ID:
- 22227937
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 20, Issue 7; Other Information: (c) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Bulk ion acceleration and particle heating during magnetic reconnection in a laboratory plasma
Laboratory Measurement of Large-Amplitude Whistler Pulses Generated by Fast Magnetic Reconnection