Kinetic instabilities commonly arise from anisotropic (different properties in different directions) electron velocity distributions within ionospheric, cosmic and terrestrial plasmas. But only a handful of experiments have validated that theory so far. Ultrafast laser pulses can be used during optical field ionization of atoms to generate plasmas with known anisotropic electron velocity distributions to understand the phenomenon in practice. In a recent study, Chaojie Zhang and an interdisciplinary research team in the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Physics and Astronomy in the U.S., showed that plasma underwent two-stream filamentation following ionization—but prior to collision-based thermalization of the constituent electrons.
from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science https://ift.tt/30lTwPe
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