Ion acceleration at two collisionless shocks in a multicomponent plasma

Intense laser-plasma interactions are an essential tool for the laboratory study of ion acceleration at a collisionless shock. With two-dimensional particle-in-cell calculations of a multicomponent plasma we observe two electrostatic collisionless shocks at two distinct longitudinal positions when d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2021-04
Main Authors: Kumar, Rajesh, Sakawa, Youichi, Sano, Takayoshi, Dohl, Leonard N K, Woolsey, Nigel, Morace, Alessio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astrophysics
Carbon
Laboratories
Laser plasma interactions
Lasers
Mathematical analysis
Particle acceleration
Particle in cell technique
Plasma
Plasma interactions
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Summary:Intense laser-plasma interactions are an essential tool for the laboratory study of ion acceleration at a collisionless shock. With two-dimensional particle-in-cell calculations of a multicomponent plasma we observe two electrostatic collisionless shocks at two distinct longitudinal positions when driven with a linearly-polarized laser at normalized laser vector potential a0 that exceeds 10. Moreover, these shocks, associated with protons and carbon ions, show a power-law dependence on a0 and accelerate ions to different velocities in an expanding upstream with higher flux than in a single-component hydrogen or carbon plasma. This results from an electrostatic ion two-stream instability caused by differences in the charge-to-mass ratio of different ions. Particle acceleration in collisionless shocks in multicomponent plasma are ubiquitous in space and astrophysics, and these calculations identify the possibility for studying these complex processes in the laboratory.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2104.00866