Signatures of an energetic charge bunch moving in a plasma
Vikram Dharodi, Atul Kumar, Abhijit Sen

TL;DR
This paper uses particle-in-cell simulations to study how energetic charge bunches moving through plasma generate various wave structures and signatures, revealing dependencies on charge and shape, with implications for plasma heating and space debris analysis.
Contribution
It provides a detailed simulation-based analysis of wave structures and plasma signatures caused by different shaped charge bunches, highlighting new effects like ion energization and trapping.
Findings
Precursor speeds depend on total charge of the ion bunch.
Local particle trapping and energization lead to energetic ion beam-lets.
Wave structures vary with the shape of the charge source.
Abstract
A charge bunch moving in a plasma can excite a variety of linear and nonlinear waves in the form of trailing wakes, fore-wake shocks and precursor solitons. These structures can further interact with the background plasma to create secondary effects that can serve as signatures of the passage of the charge bunch. Using particle-in-cell simulations we investigate in detail the dynamics of a plasma system that is being traversed by an energetic charged ion bunch. Using two different shapes of the charge source, namely, an idealized one dimensional line source and a two dimensional thin rectangular source we examine the differences in the nature of the excited wave structures and their consequent impact on the background plasma. Our simulations reveal interesting features such as the dependence of the precursor speeds on the total charge of the ion bunch, local particle trapping, and…
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Taxonomy
TopicsDust and Plasma Wave Phenomena · Particle accelerators and beam dynamics · Plasma Diagnostics and Applications
