Controlling Instabilities and Energy Transfer in Vlasov Plasmas

This award supports a joint effort between the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Texas at Austin to study the underlying physics of how a plasma responds to energy inputs. The ultimate goal of the project is to develop techniques to actively control the evolution of the plasma state and energy flow. The control of plasma dynamics is central to a wide range of applications. Knowledge gained in this project is expected to help realize the technological promise of many plasma-based systems, including laser-plasma accelerators with applications ranging from high-energy physics, astrophysics, and nuclear science to medicine, biology, and chemistry. This work will also have an educational component that will serve to help renew the plasma science and engineering workforce at all levels by providing training in both the analytical and numerical treatment of plasma dynamics. Plasma-based systems are the subject of much investigation as energy converters. In these systems, electromagnetic radiation impinges on the plasma, driving a complex internal state which is generally allowed to evolve freely, ultimately forming beams of particle and or radiation. In this project, linear theory will be used to instantaneously predict the short time evolution of the full nonlinear system and this may be used to apply external fields to steer the evolution on a desirable path to obtain a sought after state. Controlling the dynamics in plasma-based systems, beyond simply suppressing instabilities, could open the door to releasing significant amounts of energy on queue. Such control would also allow the plasma to be engineered to enable energy conversion from electromagnetic frequencies that are easily produced to those parts of the spectrum that currently do not have ready sources. 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.