IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science

This work describes an experiment to demonstrate, for the first time, laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA), driven by 10.6-μm light from a CO2 laser. This experiment is also noteworthy because it will operate in a pseudoresonant LWFA regime, in which the laser-pulse-length is too long for resonant LWFA, but too short for self-modulated LWFA. Nonetheless, high acceleration gradients ar... View full abstract»

Electron beam based radiation sources provide electromagnetic radiation for countless applications. The properties of the radiation are primarily determined by the properties of the electron beam. Compact laser driven accelerators are being developed that can provide ultrashort electron bunches (femtosecond duration) with relativistic energies reaching toward a GeV. The electron bunches are produc... View full abstract»

It is well known that circularly polarized electromagnetic waves propagating along the magnetic field in the plasma are strongly absorbed when the wave frequency matches the electron cyclotron frequency. This absorption can be eliminated by adding a weak magnetic undulator, leading to the undulator-induced transparency (UIT) of the plasma. Moreover, the group velocity of the waves in the plasma is... View full abstract»

Experimental study of intermediate plasma catalyzed partial oxidation of methane is completed and results are presented along with numerical simulations. To establish the best plasma parameters for industrial chemical applications like partial oxidation, the stability mechanism of different plasma sources is reviewed. Various kinds of intermediate plasma sources are discussed for their application... View full abstract»

We report the results of parametric and kinetic studies of the plasmochemical degradation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in respirable atmospheres using a nonthermal ambient-pressure plasma generated in a pin-to-plate capillary plasma electrode (CPE) discharge reactor. Parameters studied included the reactor volume, contaminant residence time, energy density, and influent contaminant... View full abstract»

By reducing the distance between the dielectric end-fittings of a coaxial pulsed corona reactor to values on the order of millimeters, the efficiency of volatile organic compound (VOC) decontamination of atmospheric pressure air could be increased by a factor of seven over that obtained in reactors with electrode lengths in the centimeter range. The increased efficiency is attributed to the increa... View full abstract»

In a plasma with ions streaming at a uniform velocity ∼cs, dust grains can be accurately modeled as particles interacting via the dynamically-screened Coulomb interaction, calculated from linear response theory for the plasma. This force is nonreciprocal, i.e., action does not equal reaction, which has remarkable dynamical consequences. We show that up to four grains can form a stab... View full abstract»

The time interval between the beginning of the laser pulse and the peak of neutron emission (bang time) is an important characteristic of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions, directly comparable to numerical simulation. For this reason, neutron bang time (NBT) detectors have been successfully operated on ICF facilities such as the Nova and OMEGA lasers, and have been proposed as a core di... View full abstract»

For the diagnostics of dense plasmas, photons in the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) or X-ray domain are required. First experiments have demonstrated the great capacity of X-ray Thomson scattering for the determination of plasma parameters such as density, temperature, and ionization state. For a reliable interpretation of the experimental data, the interaction of energetic photons with the plasma has t... View full abstract»

A sheet-beam traveling-wave amplifier has been proposed as a high-power generator of radio frequency (RF) from 95 to 300 GHz, using a microfabricated RF slow-wave structure (Carlsten, 2002). The planar geometry of microfabrication technologies matches well with the nearly planar geometry of a sheet beam, and the greater allowable beam current leads to high-peak power, high-average power, and wide ... View full abstract»

Azimuthally varying axial magnetic fields have been utilized to perform "magnetic priming" of magnetrons for rapid startup, low noise, and mode control. An overview of the latest magnetic priming experimental and simulation results are presented in this paper. Magnetic priming experiments in dc-operating microwave oven magnetrons show sideband elimination, even with the cathode heater turned off. ... View full abstract»