Investigation of the Dynamics of Interacting Magnetized Plasmas Through Experiments and Extended MHD Modeling

This award supports a study of how clouds of magnetized plasma - ionized gas of electrons and ions permeated by magnetic fields - interact with each other. Interacting plasmas with different particle densities occur in a wide variety of natural systems, including astrophysical jets propagating into the intergalactic medium and coronal mass ejections from the sun propagating toward earth in the background solar wind. Additionally, such interacting plasmas can be found in engineered nuclear fusion systems, such as in the fueling of tokamak plasmas and in jets of shell material generated in laser-driven inertial fusion systems. In this project, laboratory-scale interacting plasmas will be studied in detail in a basic plasma science device at the University of New Mexico. The experiments will be complemented by large-scale computer modeling. The project is jointly funded by the Division of Physics and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). Although there is a long history of studies of dense magnetized plasmas propagating into background vacuum, studies of propagation of such structures into background plasma began only relatively recently. A number of important questions remain about these magnetized plasma interactions, such as the details of how heat, particles, and magnetic flux or magnetic helicity are transported into background regions, and how such systems may self-organize. The goal of this work is to elucidate the detailed plasma and magnetic field dynamics of higher density plasma jets and bubbles propagating into lower density background plasma. This will be accomplished through controlled cm- and microsecond-scale laboratory experiments and closely coupled magnetohydrodynamic modeling. The project will complement other ongoing experiments that utilize laser- or pulsed power-driven jets on submillimeter- and sub microsecond-scale plasmas, where the spatial and temporal fidelity of measurements are more limited. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.