We present an investigation of the amplitude modulation of an external magnetic field-aligned right-hand circularly polarized electromagnetic electron-cyclotron (EMEC) wave in a strongly magnetized electron-positron plasma. It is shown that the dynamics of the modulated EMEC wave packet is governed by a cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The latter reveals that a modulated wave packet can propagate in the form of either a dark or a grey envelope soliton. This result could have relevance to the transport of electromagnetic wave energy over long distances via envelope solitons in the magnetospheres of pulsars and magnetars.

We investigate the dispersion property of a low-frequency electrostatic wave in a dense metallic electron-hole-ion plasma with nanoparticles. The latter are charged due to the field emission, and hence the metallic nanoparticles/nanotubes can be regarded as charged dust rods surrounded by degenerate electrons and holes, and non-degenerate ions. By using a quantum hydrodynamic model for the electrons and holes, we obtain the electron and hole number density perturbations, while the ion and dust rod number density perturbations follow the classical expressions. A dispersion relation for the low-frequency electrostatic wave in our multi-species dense metallic plasma is derived and analyzed. The possibility of exciting non-thermal electrostatic waves is also discussed.

It is shown that when the non-isothermal trapped electron current is rederived based on the orbit-limited motion theory, the variable dust charge can be expressed in terms of the Lambert function. One can then take advantage of this new transcendental function to illustrate how variable-charge nonlinear trapped dust modes can be investigated semi-analytically.

A theoretical study of the first-order stability analysis of an ion–acoustic solitary wave, propagating obliquely to an external uniform static magnetic field, has been made in a plasma consisting of warm adiabatic ions and a superposition of two distinct populations of electrons, one due to Cairns et al. and the other being the well-known Maxwell–Boltzmann distributed electrons. The weakly nonlinear and the weakly dispersive ion–acoustic wave in this plasma system can be described by the Korteweg–de Vries–Zakharov–Kuznetsov (KdV-ZK) equation and different modified KdV-ZK equations depending on the values of different parameters of the system. The nonlinear term of the KdV-ZK equation and the different modified KdV-ZK equations is of the form [φ(1)]ν(∂φ(1)/∂ζ), where ν = 1, 2, 3, 4; φ(1) is the first-order perturbed quantity of the electrostatic potential φ. For ν = 1, we have the usual KdV-ZK equation. Three-dimensional stability analysis of the solitary wave solutions of the KdV-ZK and different modified KdV-ZK equations has been investigated by the small-k perturbation expansion method of Rowlands and Infeld. For ν = 1, 2, 3, the instability conditions and the growth rate of instabilities have been obtained correct to order k, where k is the wave number of a long-wavelength plane-wave perturbation. It is found that ion–acoustic solitary waves are stable at least at the lowest order of the wave number for ν = 4.

We characterize the electron density distributions of preformed plasma for laser-accelerated proton generation. The preformed plasma of a titanium target 3 μm thick is generated by prepulse and amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) of a high-intensity Ti:sapphire laser and is measured with an interferometer using a second harmonic probe beam. High-energy protons are obtained by reducing the size of the preformed plasma by changing the ASE duration before main pulse at the front side (laser incidence side) of the target. Simulation results with two-dimensional radiation hydrodynamic code are close to the experimental results for low-density region ~4 × 1019 cm−3 at the front side. In the high-density region near to the target surface, the interferometry underestimates the density due to the substantial refraction. The characterization of hydrodynamic expansion with the interferometer and simulation is a useful tool for investigation of high-energy proton generation.

The acceleration of protons and electrons in a reconnecting current sheet (RCS) is simulated with a particle-in-cell (PIC) 2D3V (two-dimensional in space and three-dimensional in velocity space) code for the proton-to-electron mass ratio of 100. The electromagnetic configuration forming the RCS incorporates all three components of the magnetic field (including the guiding field) and a drifted electric field. PIC simulations reveal that there is a polarization electric field that appears during acceleration owing to a separation of electrons from protons towards the midplane of the RCS. If the plasma density is low, the polarization field is weak and the particle trajectories in the PIC simulations are similar to those in the test particle (TP) approach. For the higher plasma density the polarization field is stronger and it affects the trajectories of protons by increasing their orbits during acceleration. This field also leads to a less asymmetrical abundance of ejected protons towards the midplane in comparison with the TP approach. For a given magnetic topology electrons in PIC simulations are ejected to the same semispace as protons, in contrast to the TP results. This happens because the polarization field extends far beyond the thickness of a current sheet. This field decelerates the electrons, which are initially ejected into the semispace opposite to the protons, returns them back to the RCS, and, eventually, leads to the electron ejection into the same semispace as protons. The energy distribution of the ejected electrons is rather wide and single-peaked, in contrast to the two-peak narrow-energy distribution obtained in the TP approach. In the case of a strong guiding field, the mean energy of the ejected electrons is found to be smaller than it is predicted analytically and by the TP simulations. The beam of accelerated electrons is also found to generate turbulent electric field in the form of Langmuir waves.

A unified energy principle approach is presented for analysing the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability of plasmas consisting of multiple ideal and relaxed regions. The gauge a = ξ × B for the vector potential, a, of linearized perturbations is used, with the equilibrium magnetic field B obeying a Beltrami equation, ∇ × B = αB, in relaxed regions. In a region with such a force-free equilibrium Beltrami field we show that ξ obeys the same Euler–Lagrange equation whether ideal or relaxed MHD is used for perturbations, except in the neighbourhood of the magnetic surfaces where B · ∇ is singular. The difference at singular surfaces is analysed in cylindrical geometry: in ideal MHD only Newcomb's small solutions are allowed, whereas in relaxed MHD only the odd-parity large solution and even-parity small solution are allowed. A procedure for constructing global multi-region solutions in cylindrical geometry is presented. Focusing on the limit where the two interfaces approach each other arbitrarily closely, it is shown that the singular-limit problem encountered previously by Hole et al. in multi-region relaxed MHD is stabilized if the relaxed-MHD region between the coalescing interfaces is replaced by an ideal-MHD region. We then present a stable (k, pressure) phase-space plot, which allows us to determine the form a stable pressure and field profile must take in the region between the interfaces. From this knowledge, we conclude that there exists a class of single-interface plasmas that were found to be stable by Kaiser and Uecker, but are shown to be unstable when the interface is resolved.

Runaway electron ream instabilities have been observed in Ohmic plasmas in the HT-7 tokamak. The instability regime is characterized by relaxations in the electron cyclotron emission due to the relativistic anomalous Doppler resonance effect which transfers energy from parallel to perpendicular motion. Two types of instabilities in the slide-away regime have been observed in the HT-7 tokamak. The scaling of the threshold value for the instabilities to occur has been derived. It is found that the threshold value is linearly dependent on the plasma current and independent of the toroidal magnetic field strength.

The toroidal magnetic field of tokamaks is generated by a finite number of coils, which slightly modulates the magnetic field and runaway electrons experience this modulation. The resonant interaction between runaway electrons and the magnetic field ripple has been observed in the HT-7 tokamak. The maximum energy of runaways in the edge region could be blocked by the resonance of gyromotion with the nth harmonic of the magnetic field ripple. This resonant interaction is favorable for the control of runaway energy.

The gyrocenter phase-space transformation used to describe nonlinear gyrokinetic theory is rediscovered by a recursive solution of the Hamiltonian dynamics associated with the perturbed guiding-center Vlasov operator. The present work clarifies the relation between the derivation of the gyrocenter phase-space coordinates by the guiding-center recursive Vlasov method and the method of Lie-transform phase-space transformations.

Using the reductive perturbation method, we present a theory for dust–acoustic nonlinear periodic waves, namely dust–acoustic cnoidal waves, in a plasma containing hot electrons and ions, and warm dust grains with varying charge. It is found that the frequency of the cnoidal wave is a function of its amplitude. It is also found that the dust grain charge fluctuation and other plasma parameters modify the properties of the dust–acoustic cnoidal waves. In the limiting case, these dust–acoustic cnoidal waves reduce to the well-known dust–acoustic solitons.