Exact solutions to collisionless external gas flows

This paper presents exact density, velocity and temperature solutions for two problems of collisionless gas flows around a flat plate or a spherical object. At any point off the object, the local velocity distribution function consists of two pieces of Maxwellian distributions: one for the free stream which is characterized by free stream density, temperature and average velocity, n0, T0, U0; and the other is for the wall and it is characterized by density at wall and wall temperature, nw,Tw. Directly integrating the distribution functions leads to complex but exact flowfield solutions. To validate these solutions, we perform numerical simulations with the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. In general, the analytical and numerical results are virtually identical. The evaluation of these analytical solutions only requires less than one minute while the DSMC simulations require several days.

太阳风动量涨落激发磁层亚暴的机制

本文将太阳风涨落传输能量产生磁层亚暴的机制推广到无碰撞等离子体过程。太阳风的涨落在磁层顶激发压缩阿尔文波,并在磁尾的无碰撞等离子体中传播。尾瓣中满足条件β<<1,而等离子体片中β≥1,其中β为等离子体压力与磁压之比。这样,快磁声波在尾瓣中几乎不衰减,而在等离子体片中很快衰减,将波动能量耗散在等离子体片中使等离子体加热或者粒子加速。这种机制还表明,磁尾等离子体片中的高能粒子可以由太阳风涨落动能耗散而被加速,不一定是直接源于太阳。

Few-cycle relativistic solitons in plasmas

A set of exact one-dimensional solutions to coupled nonlinear equations describing the propagation of a relativistic ultrashort circularly polarized laser pulse in a cold collisionless and bounded plasma where electrons have an initial velocity in the laser propagating direction is presented. The solutions investigated here are in the form of quickly moving envelop solitons at a propagation velocity comparable to the light speed. The features of solitons in both underdense and overdense plasmas with electrons having different given initial velocities in the laser propagating direction are described. It is found that the amplitude of solitons is larger and soliton width shorter in plasmas where electrons have a larger initial velocity. In overdense plasmas, soliton duration is shorter, the amplitude higher than that in underdense plasmas where electrons have the same initial velocity.

Effect of plasma temperature on electrostatic shock generation and ion acceleration by laser

The effect of plasma temperature on electrostatic shock generated by a circularly polarized laser pulse in overdense plasma is studied by particle-in-cell simulation. Ion reflection and transmission in the collisionless electrostatic shock (CES) are investigated analytically. As the initial ion temperature is varied, a distinct transition from the laser-driven piston scenario with all ions being reflected to the CES scenario with partial ion reflection is found. The results show that at low but finite temperatures the ions are much more accelerated than if they were cold.