[HN Gopher] Scientists discover how high-energy electrons streng...
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       Scientists discover how high-energy electrons strengthen magnetic
       fields
        
       Author : gamontserrat
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2021-08-30 12:50 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www6.slac.stanford.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www6.slac.stanford.edu)
        
       | kaiju0 wrote:
       | What are the implications of this in regards to fusion
       | containment?
        
         | dvh wrote:
         | It has potential to make fusion available 10 years sooner. So
         | in 40 years instead of 50 years.
        
         | whatshisface wrote:
         | I don't know of any, but it does remind me of wakefield
         | accelerators, a compact way to generate high energy particles
         | using plasma.
        
           | amirhirsch wrote:
           | Here's the PRL article:
           | 
           | https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12.
           | ..
           | 
           | Abstract
           | 
           | Magnetic field amplification by relativistic streaming plasma
           | instabilities is central to a wide variety of high-energy
           | astrophysical environments as well as to laboratory scenarios
           | associated with intense lasers and electron beams. We report
           | on a new secondary nonlinear instability that arises for
           | relativistic dilute electron beams after the saturation of
           | the linear Weibel instability. This instability grows due to
           | the transverse magnetic pressure associated with the beam
           | current filaments, which cannot be quickly neutralized due to
           | the inertia of background ions. We show that it can amplify
           | the magnetic field strength and spatial scale by orders of
           | magnitude, leading to large-scale plasma cavities with strong
           | magnetic field and to very efficient conversion of the beam
           | kinetic energy into magnetic energy. The instability growth
           | rate, saturation level, and scale length are derived
           | analytically and shown to be in good agreement with fully
           | kinetic simulations.
        
             | CoastalCoder wrote:
             | I love how much the abstract sounds like flavor text for a
             | sci-fi weapon.
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-30 23:02 UTC)