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G. Zwicknagel

Publications and source records attributed to G. Zwicknagel.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

Cooling force on ions in a magnetized electron plasma

Electron cooling is a well-established method to improve the phase space quality of ion beams in storage rings. In the common rest frame of the ion and the electron beam the ion is subjected to a drag force and it experiences a loss or a gain of energy which eventually reduces the energy spread of the ion beam. A calculation of this process is complicated as the electron velocity distribution is anisotropic and the cooling process takes place in a magnetic field which guides the electrons. In this paper the cooling force is calculated in a model of binary collisions (BC) between ions and magnetized electrons, in which the Coulomb interaction is treated up to second-order as a perturbation to the helical motion of the electrons. The calculations are done with the help of an improved BC theory which is uniformly valid for any strength of the magnetic field and where the second-order two-body forces are treated in the interaction in Fourier space without specifying the interaction potential. The cooling force is explicitly calculated for a regularized and screened potential which is both of finite range and less singular than the Coulomb interaction at the origin. Closed expressions are derived for monochromatic electron beams, which are folded with the velocity distributions of the electrons and ions. The resulting cooling force is evaluated for anisotropic Maxwell velocity distributions of the electrons and ions.

physics.plasm-ph

Microfield Fluctuations and Spectral Line Shapes in Strongly Coupled Two-Component Plasmas

The spectral line shapes for hydrogen-like heavy ion emitters embedded in strongly correlated two-component electron-ion plasmas are investigated with numerical simulations. For that purpose the microfield fluctuations are calculated by molecular dynamics simulations where short range quantum effects are taken into account by using a regularized Coulomb potential for the electron-ion interaction. The microfield fluctuations are used as input in a numerical solution of the time-dependent Schroedinger equation for the radiating electron. In distinction to the standard impact and quasistatic approximations the method presented here allows to account for the correlations between plasma ions and electrons. The shapes of the Ly-alpha line in Al are investigated in the intermediate regime. The calculations are in good agreement with experiments on the Ly-alpha line in laser generated plasmas.

physics.plasm-ph

Energy transfer in binary collisions of two gyrating charged particles in a magnetic field

Binary collisions of the gyrating charged particles in an external magnetic field are considered within a classical second-order perturbation theory, i.e., up to contributions which are quadratic in the binary interaction, starting from the unperturbed helical motion of the particles. The calculations are done with the help of a binary collisions treatment which is valid for any strength of the magnetic field and involves all harmonics of the particles cyclotron motion. The energy transfer is explicitly calculated for a regularized and screened potential which is both of finite range and nonsingular at the origin. The validity of the perturbation treatment is evaluated by comparing with classical trajectory Monte Carlo (CTMC) calculations which also allow to investigate the strong collisions with large energy and velocity transfer at low velocities. For large initial velocities on the other hand, only small velocity transfers occur. There the nonperturbative numerical CTMC results agree excellently with the predictions of the perturbative treatment.

physics.plasm-ph

Binary collisions of charged particles in a magnetic field

Binary collisions between charged particles in an external magnetic field are considered in second-order perturbation theory, starting from the unperturbed helical motion of the particles. The calculations are done with the help of an improved binary collisions treatment which is valid for any strength of the magnetic field, where the second-order energy and velocity transfers are represented in Fourier space for arbitrary interaction potentials. The energy transfer is explicitly calculated for a regularized and screened potential which is both of finite range and non-singular at the origin, and which involves as limiting cases the Debye (i.e., screened) and Coulomb potential. Two distinct cases are considered in detail. (i) The collision of two identical (e.g., electron-electron) particles; (ii) and the collision between a magnetized electron and an uniformly moving heavy ion. The energy transfer involves all harmonics of the electron cyclotron motion. The validity of the perturbation treatment is evaluated by comparing with classical trajectory Monte--Carlo calculations which also allows to investigate the strong collisions with large energy and velocity transfer at low velocities. For large initial velocities on the other hand, only small velocity transfers occur. There the non-perturbative numerical classical trajectory Monte--Carlo results agree excellently with the predictions of the perturbative treatment.

physics.plasm-ph

Renormalized cluster expansion of the microfield distribution in a strongly coupled two-component plasmas

The electric microfield distribution (MFD) at an impurity ion is studied for two-component (TCP) electron-ion plasmas using molecular dynamics simulation and theoretical models. The particles are treated within classical statistical mechanics using an electron-ion Coulomb potential regularized at distances less than the de Broglie length to take into account quantum-diffraction effects. Corrections to the potential-of-mean-force exponential (PMFEX) approximation recently proposed for MFD in a strongly coupled TCP [Phys. Rev. E 72, 036403 (2005)] are obtained and discussed. This has been done by a generalization of the standard Baranger-Mozer and renormalized cluster expansion techniques originally developed for the one-component plasmas to the TCPs. The results obtained for a neutral point are compared with those from molecular dynamics simulations. It is shown that the corrections do not help to improve the PMFEX approximation for a TCP with low ionic charge Z. But starting with Z > 5 the PMFEX model is substantially improved and the agreement with numerical simulations is excellent. We have also found that with increasing coupling the PMFEX approximation becomes invalid to predict the MFD at a neutral point while its corrected version agrees satisfactory with the simulations.

physics.plasm-ph

Microfield distributions in strongly coupled two-component plasmas

The electric microfield distribution at charged particles is studied for two-component electron-ion plasmas using molecular dynamics simulation and theoretical models. The particles are treated within classical statistical mechanics using an electron-ion Coulomb potential regularized at distances less than the de Broglie length to take into account the quantum-diffraction effects. The potential-of-mean-force (PMF) approximation is deduced from a canonical ensemble formulation. The resulting probability density of the electric microfield satisfies exactly the second-moment sum rule without the use of adjustable parameters. The correlation functions between the charged radiator and the plasma ions and electrons are calculated using molecular dynamics simulations and the hypernetted-chain approximation for a two-component plasma. It is shown that the agreement between the theoretical models for the microfield distributions and the simulations is quite good in general.

physics.plasm-ph

Stopping of ion beam in a temperature anisotropic magnetized plasma

Using the dielectric theory for a weakly coupled plasma we investigate the stopping power of the ion in a temperature anisotropic magnetized electron plasma. The analysis is based on the assumption that the energy variation of the ion is much less than its kinetic energy. The obtained general expression for stopping power is analyzed for weak and strong magnetic fields (i.e., for the electron cyclotron frequency less than and greater than the plasma frequency), and for low and high ion velocities. It is found that the friction coefficient contains, in addition to the usual velocity independent friction coefficient, an anomulous term which diverges logarithmically as the projectile velocity approaches zero. The physical origin of this anomulous term is the coupling between the cyclotron motion of the electrons and the long-wave length, low-frequency fluctuations produced by the projectile ion.

physics.plasm-ph