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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2001. / Adviser: Alexander Vilenkin. Submitted to the Dept. of Physics. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-114). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

The heating of solar chromospheric internetwork regions is investigated by means of the absorption of electromagnetic (EM) waves that originate from the photospheric black body radiation. It is studied in the framework of a plasma slab model. The absorption is provided by the electron-neutral collisions in which electrons oscillate in the EM wave field and electron-neutral collisions damp the EM wave. It is shown that for plausible physical parameters, the absorbed heating flux is between 20% and 45% of the chromospheric radiative loss flux requirement. Further, 1.5D particle-in-cell simulations of a hot, low density electron beam injected into magnetized, Maxwellian plasma were used to further explore the alternative non-gyrotropic beam driven EM emission mechanism, which was first studied in Ref.[83]. Variation of beam injection angle and background density gradient showed that the emission is caused by the perpendicular component of the beam injection current, whereas the parallel component only produces Langmuir waves, which play no role in the generation of EM waves in our mechanism. When the beam is injected perpendicularly to the background magnetic field, any electrostatic wave generation is turned off and a purely EM signal is left. Finally, a possible solution to the unexplained high intensity hard x-ray emission observable during solar flares was investigated via 3D particle-in-cell simulations. A beam of accelerated electrons was injected into a magnetised, Maxwellian, homogeneous and inhomogeneous background plasma. The electron distribution function was unstable to the beam-plasma instability and was shown to generate Langmuir waves, while relaxing to plateau formation. Three different background plasma density gradients were investigated. The strong gradient case produced the largest fraction of electrons beyond 15vth. Further, Langmuir wave power is shown to drift to smaller wavenumbers, as found in previous quasi-linear simulations.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on Jan. 5, 2010). "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics, Department of Physics, University of Alberta." Includes bibliographical references.

We report the status of two-color high intensity laser-plasma interaction experiments on the UT³ laser system at the University of Texas at Austin. After an outline of the experimental apparatus, an overview of the motivating theoretical work, and a characterization of the performance of our Chirped Pulse Raman Amplification system (CPRA) we report the status of our most recent experiment. We have attempted to seed the growth of the Raman Forward Scattering (RFS) instability in order to produce electrons at lower driving pulse power than is conventionally needed. We have been unsuccessful, and provide reasons why and recommendations for future modifications to the experimental apparatus. The most significant conclusion is that the CPRA system as it is now is not appropriate for this experiment because the observed RFS spectrum is at higher wavelength than our system. Possible future changes include either amplifying a separate barium nitrate sideband at 938 nm through the CPRA system or using a different Raman active medium after the main 800 nm UT³ pulse is compressed. The feasibility study of these possible modifications is not yet complete. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2008. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xxvii, 375 p. : ill. (some col.). Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-152).

The topic of this thesis is a detailed investigation of different aspects of the particle acceleration mechanisms operating in Collapsing Magnetic Traps (CMTs), which have been suggested as one possible mechanism for particle acceleration during solar flares. The acceleration processes in CMTs are investigated using guiding centre test particle calculations. Results including terms of different orders in the guiding centre approximation are compared to help identify which of the terms are important for the acceleration of particles. For a basic 2D CMT model the effects of different initial conditions (position, kinetic energy and pitch angle) of particles are investigated in detail. The main result is that the particles that gain most energy are those with initial pitch angles close to 90° and start in weak field regions in the centre of the CMT. The dominant acceleration mechanism for these particles is betatron acceleration, but other particles also show signatures of Fermi acceleration. The basic CMT model is then extended by (a) including a magnetic field component in the invariant direction and (b) by making it asymmetric. It is found that the addition of a guide field does not change the characteristics of particle acceleration very much, but for the asymmetric models the associated energy gain is found to be much smaller than in symmetric models, because the particles can no longer remain very close to the trap centre throughout their orbit. The test particle method is then also applied to a CMT model from the literature which contains a magnetic X-line and open and closed field lines and the results are compared with the previous results and the findings in the literature. Finally, the theoretical framework of CMT models is extended to 2.5D models with shear flow and to fully 3D models, allowing the construction of more realistic CMT models in the future.

Plasma, a gas of charged particles exhibiting collective behaviour, can be found everywhere in our vast Universe. The characteristics of plasma in very distant parts of the Universe can be similar to characteristics in our solar system and near-Earth space. We can therefore gain an understanding of what happens in astrophysical plasmas by studying processes occurring in near Earth space, an environment much easier to reach. Large volumes in space are filled with plasma and when different plasmas interact distinct boundaries are often created. Many important physical processes, for example particle acceleration, occur at these boundaries. Thus, it is very important to study and understand such boundaries. In Paper I we study magnetic nulls, regions of vanishing magnetic fields, that form inside boundaries separating plasmas with different magnetic field orientations. For the first time, a statistical study of magnetic nulls in the Earth’s nightside magnetosphere has been done by using simultaneous measurements from all four Cluster spacecraft. We find that magnetic nulls occur both in the magnetopause and the magnetotail. In addition, we introduce a method to determine the reliability of the type identification of the observed nulls. In the manuscript of Paper II we study a different boundary, the shocked solar wind plasma in the magnetosheath, using the new Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. We show that a region of strong current in the form of a current sheet is forming inside the turbulent magnetosheath behind a quasi-parallel shock. The strong current sheet can be related to the jets with extreme dynamic pressure, several times that of the undisturbed solar wind dynamic pressure. The current sheet is also associated with electron acceleration parallel to the background magnetic field. In addition, the current sheet satisfies the Walén relation suggesting that plasmas on both sides of the current region are magnetically connected. We speculate on the formation mechanisms of the current sheet and the physical processes inside and around the current sheet.

Beams of polarized protons play an important part in the study of the spin dependence of the nuclear force by measuring the analyzing power in nuclear reactions. The source at iThemba LABS produces a beam of polarized protons that is pre-accelerated by an injector cyclotron (SPC2) to a energy of 8 MeV before acceleration by the main separated-sector cyclotron to 200 MeV for physics research. The polarized ion source is one of the two external ion sources of SPC2. Inside the ion source hydrogen molecules are dissociated into atoms in the dissociator and cooled to a temperature of approximately 30 K in the nozzle. The atoms are polarized by a pair of sextupole magnets and the nucleus is polarized by RF transitions between hyperfine levels in hydrogen atoms. The atoms are then ionized by electrons in the ionizer. The source has various sensitive devices, which influence beam intensity and polarization. Nitrogen gas is used to prevent recombination of atoms after dissociation. The amount of nitrogen and the temperature at which it is used plays a very important role in optimizing the beam current. The number of electrons released in the ionizer is influenced by the size and shape of the filament. Optimization of the source will ensure that beams of better quality (a better current and stability) are produced.

In this thesis the following problems are studied: 1-Relativistic self-focusing and channelling of intense laser pulses have been studied in underdense plasma using 2D PIC simulations, for different laser powers and plasma densities. Analytical solutions for the stationary evacuated channels have been recovered in PIC simulations. It is shown that otherwise stable channels can accelerate electrons due to surface waves on the walls of the channels. Relativistic filaments with finite electron density are unstable to transverse modulations which lead in the nonlinear stage to the break-up of laser pulses into independent filaments. 2-Although 3D simulations are limited, they are more realistic. Azimuthal stability of the laser pulses in interaction with underdense plasma can only be studied in 3D geometry. Relativistic self-focusing and channelling of intense laser pulses have been studied in underdense plasma using 3D PIC simulations, for different laser powers and plasma densities. Analytical solutions for the stationary evacuated channels and ring structure have been recovered in PIC simulations. The stability of ring structure due to azimuthal perturbations has been studied both in theory and in simulations. The gain length of such instability is smaller at higher densities $(>0.1n_{cr})$. It is shown that the azimuthal perturbation can break up the azimuthal symmetry of the laser pulse. 3-Working with circularly polarized laser pulses, gave us a motivation to study Inverse Faraday Effect in interaction of circularly polarized laser pulses with plasma. Axial magnetic field generation by intense circularly polarized laser beams in underdense plasmas has been studied with 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and by means of theoretical analysis. The source of azimuthal nonlinear currents and of the axial magnetic field depends on the transverse inhomogeneities of the electron density and laser intensity. The fields reach maximum strength of several tens of MG for laser pulses undergoing relativistic self-focusing and channelling in moderately relativistic regime. 4-Electron wakefield acceleration was studied in support of the experiment which was carried on using 7 TW laser beam at Canadian Advanced Laser Light source facility. 2D simulations were performed to study this problem. The energy the electrons gained in the process was peaked at 20-30 Mev close to the experimental results.