Dynamics of antiproton plasma in a time-dependent harmonic trap

TL;DR

This paper models the dynamics of an antiproton plasma in a time-varying harmonic trap using a self-consistent fluid approach with a variational method, capturing thermal and Coulomb effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel time-dependent variational framework for antiproton plasma dynamics, simplifying the problem to nonlinear differential equations.

Findings

Numerical simulations demonstrate the plasma's response to adiabatic cooling.

The model effectively incorporates thermal and Coulomb interactions.

Results provide insights into plasma behavior in dynamic trapping potentials.

Abstract

An antiproton plasma confined in a quasi-1D device is described in terms of a self-consistent fluid formulation using a variational approach. Unlike previous treatments, the use of the time-dependent variational method allows to retain the thermal and Coulomb effects. A certain Ansatz is proposed for the number density and fluid velocity fields, which reduces the problem essentially to ordinary nonlinear differential equations. In adiabatic cooling, the frequency of the trap potential is slowly decreased. An adiabatic equation of state is assumed for closure. The numerical simulation of the nonlinear dynamics is performed, for realistic parameters.