Splitter target for controlling magnetic reconnection in relativistic laser plasma interactions

Welcome to this meeting in Taipei. I am very happy to see many of world's active leading researchers in this field are gathering here. This is indeed a time of great excitement in the plasma acceleration. In April, three articles appeared in Nature demonstrating the acceleration of nearly mono-energetic electrons by short pulsed lasers when they reached the intensity threshold for relativistic self-focusing. In May, the acceleration of SLAC 28.5 GeV electron beam by the beam driven wakefield in plasma was published in PRL. It is fitting in this centennial year of publication of Einstein's four papers that relativistic laser plasma interaction becomes a hot topic and relativistic plasma physics made a big stride. In this talk, I would like to give a personal perspective of particle acceleration in plasmas and survey some of the outstanding recent results. Then I would like to pose some questions and show some of the preliminary work by my colleagues here notably that of Prof. S. H. Chen in simulation. Our universe now is believed to be dominated by Dark Matter and Dark Energy. But the visible universe is dominantly in the plasma state and plasma is a very effective accelerating medium. Recent advances in high energy astrophysics have demonstrated amply the explosive and efficient particle acceleration by plasma processes — Radio jets, X ray sources, pulsars, and Gamma ray bursts. The particle acceleration is most clearly seen in the acceleration of Cosmic Rays. Eugene Parker once remarked the fact the Nature seems to be so unfair that it gives most of the energies to just a few electrons — so plasma as an accelerating medium can be very capitalistic. The Cosmic Ray spectrum is very rich in different characteristic slopes

One of the most famous rapid energy conversion mechanisms in space is a magnetic reconnection. The general concept of a magnetic reconnection is that the rapid energy conversion from magnetic field energy to thermal energy, kinetic energy or non-thermal particle energy. The understanding of rapid energy conversion rates from magnetic field energy to other energy is the fundamental and essential problem in the space physics. One of the important goals for studying magnetic reconnection is to answer what plasma condition/parameter controls the energy conversion rates. Recently, solar atmosphere has been focused as a space laboratory for magnetic reconnection because of its variety in plasma condition. So far considerable effort has been devoted toward understanding the energy conversion rates of magnetic reconnection, and various typical features associated with magnetic reconnection have been observed in the solar atmosphere with the modern spacecraft/ground base telescopes. In this chapter, we first introduce the variety of plasma condition/parameter in solar atmosphere. Later, we discuss what we can learn about a magnetic reconnection from the Hinode observation.

Polarization control of terahertz (THz) pulses in the high-field regime is a challenging subject. Here we propose and numerically demonstrate an all-optical scheme to generate a polarization-tunable high-field THz source based on relativistic laser plasma interactions. By adjusting the polarization state of the driving laser, collective oscillation of the plasmas can be steered. Phase difference between the laser field components is inherited in the plasma dynamics, as well as in the resulting THz generation process. Single-cycle extremely intense THz pulses with field strength ∼ GV/cm can be generated. The THz polarization state can be tuned from linear through elliptical to circular by changing the polarization state of the driving laser.

A high-order implicit multidimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) method is developed for simulating plasmas at solid densities. The space-time arrangement is based on Yee and a leapfrog algorithm for electromagnetic fields and particle advancement. The field solver algorithm completely eliminates numerical instabilities found in explicit PIC methods with relaxed time step and grid resolution. Moreover, this algorithm eliminates the numerical cooling found in the standard implicit PIC methods by using a pseudo-electric-field method. The particle pusher algorithm combines the standard Boris particle pusher with the Newton-Krylov iteration method. This algorithm increases the precision accuracy by several orders of magnitude when compared with the standard Boris particle pusher and also significantly decreases the iteration time when compared with the pure Newton-Krylov method. The code is tested with several benchmarks, including Weibel instability, and relativistic laser plasma interactions at both low and solid densities.

In relativistic laser plasma interaction, electrons can be simultaneously accelerated and wiggled in an ion cavity created in the wake of an intense short pulse laser propagating in an underdense plasma. As a consequence of their motion, the accelerated electrons emit an intense x-ray beam called laser produced betatron radiation. Being an emission from charged particles, the features of the betatron source are directly linked to the electrons trajectories. In particular, the radiation is emitted in the direction of the electrons velocity. In this article we show how an image of electrons orbits in the wakefield cavity can be deduced from the structure of x-ray spatial profiles.

The present status and future prospects of the laser fusion research and related laser plasma physics are reviewed. In laser fusion research, giant lasers for ignition and burn by imploding DT fuel pellets are under construction at LLNL (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) and CEA, France. In Japan , the Gekko XII and the Peta Watt laser system have been operated to investigate the implosion hydrodynamics, fast ignition, and the relativistic laser plasma interactions and a new project; FIREX( Fast Ignition Realization Experiment) had started toward the ignition and burn at the Institute of laser Engineering of Osaka University. Recently, heating experiments with cone shell target have been carried out. The thermal neutron yield is found to increase by three orders of magnitude by the peta watt laser injection to the cone shell target. The FIREX‐I is planned according to this experimental results, where multi 10kJ peta watt laser is used to heat compressed DT fuel to the ignition temperature. The FIREX‐II will follow for demonstrating ignition and burn, in which the implosion laser and heating laser are up‐graded.

It is known that relativistic laser plasma interactions can already today induce accelerating fields beyond some TV/m, which are indeed capable to efficiently accelerate plasma background electrons as well as protons. An introduction to the current state of the art will be given and possible applications of these optically induced charged particle sources will be discussed.

An ionospheric signature of possible enhanced magnetic field merging on the dayside magnetopause

Intermittent turbulence is key for understanding the stochastic nonlinear dynamics of space, astrophysical, and laboratory plasmas. We review the theory of deterministic and stochastic temporal chaos in plasmas and discuss its link to intermittent turbulence observed in space plasmas. First, we discuss the theory of chaos, intermittency, and complexity for nonlinear Alfvén waves, and parametric decay and modulational wave–wave interactions, in the absence/presence of noise. The transition from order to chaos is studied using the bifurcation diagram. The following two types of deterministic intermittent chaos in plasmas are considered: type-I Pomeau–Manneville intermittency and crisis-induced intermittency. The role of structures known as chaotic saddles in deterministic and stochastic chaos in plasmas is investigated. Alfvén complexity associated with noise-induced intermittency, in the presence of multistability, is studied. Next, we present evidence of magnetic reconnection and intermittent magnetic turbulence in coronal mass ejections in the solar corona and solar wind via remote and in situ observations. The signatures of turbulent magnetic reconnection, i.e., bifurcated current sheet, reconnecting jet, parallel/anti-parallel Alfvénic waves, and spiky dynamical pressure pulse, as well as fully developed turbulence, are detected at the leading edge of an interplanetary coronal mass ejection and the interface region of two merging interplanetary magnetic flux ropes. Methods for quantifying the degree of coherence, amplitude–phase synchronization, and multifractality of nonlinear multiscale fluctuations are discussed. The stochastic chaotic nature of Alfvénic intermittent structures driven by magnetic reconnection is determined by a complexity–entropy analysis. Finally, we discuss the relation of nonlinear dynamics and intermittent turbulence in space plasmas to similar phenomena observed in astrophysical and laboratory plasmas, e.g., coronal mass ejections and flares in the stellar-exoplanetary environment and Galactic Center, as well as chaos, magnetic reconnection, and intermittent turbulence in laser-plasma and nuclear fusion experiments.

We perform a statistical study of flux ropes and reconnection fronts based on MErcury Surface, Space ENviroment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) magnetic field and plasma observations to study the implications for the spatial distribution of reconnection sites in Mercury's near magnetotail. The results show important differences of temporal and spatial distributions as compared to Earth. We have surveyed the plasma sheet crossings between −2 RM and −3 RM downtail from the planet, i.e., the location of Near‐Mercury Neutral Line (NMNL). Plasma sheets were defined to be regions with β ≥ 0.5. Using this definition, 39 flux ropes and 86 reconnection fronts were identified in the plasma sheet. At Mercury, the distributions of flux ropes and reconnection fronts show clear dawn‐dusk asymmetry with much higher occurrence rate on the dawnside plasma sheet than on the duskside. This suggests that magnetic reconnection in Mercury's magnetotail occurs more frequently in the dawnside than in the duskside plasma sheet, which is different than the observations in Earth's magnetotail showing more reconnection signatures in the duskside plasma sheet. The distribution of plasma sheet thickness shows that plasma sheet near the midnight is the thinnest part and does not show obvious asymmetry. Thus, the reasons that cause magnetic reconnection to preferentially occur on the dawnside of the magnetotail at Mercury may not be the plasma sheet thickness and require further study. The peak occurrence rates of flux ropes and reconnection fronts in Mercury's plasma sheet are ~ 60 times higher than that of Earth's values, which we interpret to be due to the highly variable magnetospheric conditions at Mercury. Such higher occurrence rate of magnetic reconnection would generate more plasma flows in the dawnside plasma sheet than in the duskside. These plasma flows would mostly brake and initiate the substorm dipolarization on the postmidnight sector at Mercury rather than the premidnight susbtorm onset location at Earth.

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Dynamic load balancing with enhanced shared-memory parallelism for particle-in-cell codes

In astrophysics, plasmas occur under very extreme conditions. For example, there are ultrastrong magnetic fields in neutron stars, relativistic plasmas around black holes and in jets, extremely energetic particles such as cosmic rays in the interstellar medium, extremely dense plasmas in accretion disks, and extremely large magnetic Reynolds numbers in the interstellar medium. These extreme limits for astrophysical plasmas make plasma phenomena much simpler to analyze in astrophysics than in the laboratory. An understanding of such phenomena often results in an interesting way, by simply taking the extreme limiting case of a known plasma theory. The author will describe one of the more exciting examples and will attempt to convey the excitement he felt when he was first exposed to it. However, not all plasma astrophysical phenomena are so simple. There are certain important plasma phenomena in astrophysics that have not been so easily resolved. In fact, a resolution of them is blocking significant progress in astrophysical research. They have not yet yielded to attacks by theoretical astrophysicists nor to extensive numerical simulation. The author will attempt to describe one of the more important of these plasma–astrophysical problems, and discuss why its resolution is so important to astrophysics. This significant example is fast, magnetic reconnection. Another significant example is the large-magnetic-Reynolds number magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) dynamos.

An investigation into the relativistic dissipation in magnetic reconnection is presented. The investigated system consists of an electron-positron plasma. A relativistic generalization of Ohm’s law is derived. A set of numerical simulations is analyzed, composed of runs with and without guide magnetic field, and of runs with different species temperatures. The calculations indicate that the thermal inertia-based dissipation process survives in relativistic plasmas. For antiparallel reconnection, it is found that the pressure tensor divergence remains the sole contributor to the reconnection electric field, whereas relativistic guide field reconnection exhibits a similarly important role of the bulk inertia terms.

In astrophysics, plasmas occur under very extreme conditions. For example there are ultra strong magnetic fields in neutron stars) relativistic plasmas around black holes and in jets, extremely energetic particles such as cosmic rays in the interstellar medium, extremely dense plasmas in accretion disks, and extremely large magnetic Reynold`s numbers in the interstellar medium. These extreme limits for astrophysical plasmas make plasma phenomena much simpler to analyze in astrophysics than in the laboratory. An understanding of such phenomena often results in an interesting way, by simply taking the extreme limiting case of a known plasma theory. I will describe one of the more exciting examples. I will attempt to convey the excitement I felt when I was first exposed to it. However, not all plasma astrophysical phenomena are so simple. There are certain important plasma phenomena in astrophysics, which have not been so easily resolved. In fact a resolution of them is blocking significant progress in astrophysical research. They have not yet yielded to attacks by theoretical astrophysicists nor to extensive numerical simulation. I will attempt to describe one of the more important of these plasma-astrophysical problems, and discuss why its resolution is so important to astrophysics. This significant example is fast, magnetic reconnection. Another significant example is the large-magnetic-Reynold`s-number MHD dynamos.