A necessary condition for the existence of general dissipative magneto-hydrodynamic equilibria is derived. The derivation comprises Ohm's law and the existence of magnetic surfaces, only in the sense of the Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser (KAM) theorem. All other equations describing the system are only required for evaluating the condition for a specific case.

It is shown that equilibrium polaritonic flows can amplify magnetic fields in an ultra-cold quantum electron–positron/hole (polaritons) plasma. For this purpose, a linear dispersion relation has been derived by using the quantum generalized hydrodynamic equations for the polaritons, the Maxwell equation, and Faraday's law. The dispersion relation admits purely growing instabilities, the growth rates of which are proportional to the equilibrium streaming speeds of the polaritons. Possible applications of our work to the spontaneous excitation of magnetic fields and the associated cross-field transport of the polaritons in micromechanical systems, compact dense astrophysical objects (e.g. neutron stars), and intense laser–plasma interaction experiments are mentioned.

The influence of an ergodic magnetic limiter (EML) on plasma turbulence is investigated in the Tokamak Chauffage Alfvén Brésilien (TCABR), a tokamak with a peculiar natural superposition of the electrostatic and magnetic fluctuation power spectra. Experimental results show that the EML perturbation can reduce both the magnetic oscillation and the electrostatic plasma turbulence. Whenever this occurs, the turbulence-driven particle transport is also reduced. Moreover, a bispectral analysis shows that the nonlinear coupling between low- and high-frequency electrostatic fluctuations increases significantly with the EML application.

Although the harmonics generated when intense laser light interacts with solid targets are broadly understood in terms of their dependence on the incident intensity, less attention has been paid to the ways in which their behaviour depends on plasma density. In this paper the conversion efficiencies of the odd harmonics generated when light is incident normally on the target surface are shown to be strongly resonant in character. The number of resonances is governed by harmonic order and their behaviour with density is further complicated by Langmuir wave emission at the corresponding plasma resonant densities for successive harmonic orders. Only at densities well above these resonances does the emission decay monotonically with density. The density dependence predicted by theory is confirmed by particle-in-cell simulations.

The propagation of circularly polarized electromagnetic beams along the magnetostatic field in an electron plasma is investigated. As a consequence of a strong interaction with the medium, the beam spreads rapidly on propagation near the cutoff frequencies and the cyclotron resonant frequency of the corresponding plane waves, as well as near the plasma frequency. The power absorption for unit length near the cyclotron frequency and the plasma frequency are determined. For tightly focused beams, there is significant power absorption near the plasma frequency as compared with that at the cyclotron resonant frequency.

A numerical investigation is presented to show the existence, formation and possible realization of large-amplitude solitary potentials in a charge varying dusty plasma with trapped ion particles. These nonlinear localized structures are self-consistent solutions of the Vlasov equation representing saturated states of a three-stream unstable collisionless dusty plasma. The saturation is provided by an interplay between ion trapping and dust charging. It is found that under certain conditions the effect of dust charge variation can be quite important. In particular, it may be noted that the dust charge variation leads to an additional enlargement of the nonlinear localized structure. Furthermore, our results show that the dust charge variation provides an alternate physical mechanism causing dissipation and as a consequence causes the wave amplitude to decay and transfer to the so-called noise tail.

The aim of the present work is to investigate tokamak equilibria with reversed magnetic shear and sheared flow, which may play a role in the formation of internal transport barriers (ITBs), within the framework of the two-fluid model in cylindrical geometry. The study is based on exact self-consistent solutions by means of which the impact of the magnetic shear, s, and the ‘toroidal’ (axial) and ‘poloidal’ (azimuthal) ion velocity components, viz and viθ, on the radial electric field, Er, its shear, |dEr/dr|, and the shear of the E×B velocity, ωE×B≡|d/dr(E× B/B2)|, is examined. For a wide parametric regime of experimental concern it turns out that the contributions of the viz, viθ and pressure gradient (∇ Pi) terms to Er, |Er′| and ωE×B are of the same order of magnitude. The contribution of the ∇ Pi term is missing in the framework of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) (G. Poulipoulis et al. 2004 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion46, 639). The impact of s on ωE×B through the ∇ Pi term is stronger than that through the velocity terms; in particular for constant Bz the ion pressure gradient contribution to ωE×B at the point where dEr/dr=0 scales as (1−s)(2−s), whereas the ion flow contributions to ωE×B scale as (1−s). The results indicate that, like MHD, the magnetic shear and the sheared toroidal and poloidal velocities act synergetically in producing electric fields and therefore ωE×B profiles compatible with the ones observed in discharges with ITBs; owing to the ∇ Pi term, however, the impact of s on Er, |Er′| and ωE×B is stronger than that in MHD.

An accretion disk with vertical structure around a young stellar object is investigated, considering anomalous magnetic viscosity. It was found that the I-mode was unstable in the outer disk, and sometimes turned stable in the inner disk, for the standard α model. However, we find that the I-mode is always unstable in the inner disk, owing to the anomalous magnetic viscosity.

Scale interactions in Hall magnetohydrodynamics (MHDs) are studied using both the mean field theory derivation of transport coefficients, and direct numerical simulations in three space dimensions. In the magnetically dominated regime, the eddy resistivity is found to be negative definite, leading to large-scale instabilities. A direct cascade of the total energy is observed, although as the amplitude of the Hall effect is increased, backscatter of magnetic energy to large scales is found, a feature not present in MHD flows. The coupling between the magnetic and velocity fields is different than in the MHD case, and backscatter of energy from small-scale magnetic fields to large-scale flows is also observed. For the magnetic helicity, a strong quenching of its transfer is found. We also discuss non-helical magnetically forced Hall-MHD simulations where growth of a large-scale magnetic field is observed.

Large-amplitude electrostatic solitary structures are investigated in an unmagnetized charge-varying pair–ion–dust plasma in which electrons and positrons have equal masses. Their spatial patterns are significantly modified by the presence of the positron component. In particular, it may be noted that an addition of a small concentration of positrons abruptly reduces the potential pulse amplitude as well as the net negative charge residing on the dust grain surface. Under certain conditions, the solitary wave suffers the well-known anomalous damping leading to the development of collisionless shock waves. This investigation may be taken as a prerequisite for the understanding of the electrostatic solitary waves that may occur in space dusty plasmas.

The breakdown characteristics of a low-frequency dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) at low pressure are investigated experimentally in He, Ne and Ar. The current waveform of this DBD, a series of pulses, is caused by the results of the electron avalanches under the action of the applied field and the quenching effect of the wall-charge field on the avalanches. Taking into consideration the diffusion loss of the charged particles in the breakdown processes, the experimental investigation and the theoretical analysis of its breakdown characteristics indicate that its breakdown voltage is higher than the calculation by the Paschen law and depends on the filled-gas pressure and the distance between the electrodes, instead of their product. The ion-induced secondary electron emission coefficient and the mean electron energy at the moment of breakdown can also be determined approximately by measuring the breakdown characteristics of the discharge tubes with different distances between the electrodes and combining the theoretical deductions. The experimental results and the theoretical analysis of the breakdown characteristics of this DBD are discussed.