Table of contents

Laser-wakefield accelerators (LWFAs) were proposed more than three decades ago, and while they promise to deliver compact, high energy particle accelerators, they will also provide the scientific community with novel light sources. In a LWFA, where an intense laser pulse focused onto a plasma forms an electromagnetic wave in its wake, electrons can be trapped and are now routinely accelerated to GeV energies. From terahertz radiation to gamma-rays, this article reviews light sources from relativistic electrons produced by LWFAs, and discusses their potential applications. Betatron motion, Compton scattering and undulators respectively produce x-rays or gamma-rays by oscillating relativistic electrons in the wakefield behind the laser pulse, a counter-propagating laser field, or a magnetic undulator. Other LWFA-based light sources include bremsstrahlung and terahertz radiation. We first evaluate the performance of each of these light sources, and compare them with more conventional approaches, including radio frequency accelerators or other laser-driven sources. We have then identified applications, which we discuss in details, in a broad range of fields: medical and biological applications, military, defense and industrial applications, and condensed matter and high energy density science.

NEO-2 is a linearized drift kinetic equation solver for three-dimensional toroidal magnetic fields. It has been designed in order to treat effectively—besides all other regimes—the long mean free path regime, avoiding any simplifications on device geometry or on the Coulomb collision model. The code is based on the field line integration technique combined with a multiple domain decomposition approach, which allows for introduction of an adaptive grid in velocity space. This makes NEO-2 capable of effectively resolving all boundary layers between various classes of trapped particles and passing particles, and also allows for straightforward code parallelization. In stellarators, NEO-2 is used mainly for computations of neoclassical transport coefficients in regimes with slow plasma rotation and for the evaluation of the generalized Spitzer function, which plays the role of a current drive efficiency. In tokamaks with small ideal non-axisymmetric magnetic field perturbations, NEO-2 is used for evaluation of the toroidal torque resulting from these perturbations (neoclassical toroidal viscosity). The limitation to slow plasma rotation pertinent to usage in stellarators has been removed in this case with the help of a quasilinear approach, which is valid due to the smallness of the perturbation field.

A simple analytically solvable model for blobs in magnetized plasmas is proposed. The model gives results for a scaling of the blob velocity and acceleration with varying plasma parameters. Limiting cases are considered: one where the plasma motion is strictly perpendicular to an externally imposed toroidal magnetic field, and one where the electrons can move along magnetic field lines to compensate partly the collective electric fields. For these limiting cases, the model predicts scaling laws for the dependence of the blob velocities and accelerations with varying plasma density, temperature and magnetic field strength. Also the scaling with the dominant ion mass is derived. The analysis is completed by including the effects of collisions between ions and neutrals.

The U.S. National Academies established in 2011 a steering committee to develop a comprehensive strategy for solar and space physics research. This updated and extended the first (2003) solar and space physics decadal survey. The latest decadal study implemented a 2008 Congressional directive to NASA for the fields of solar and space physics, but also addressed research in other federal agencies. The new survey broadly canvassed the fields of research to determine the current state of the discipline, identified the most important open scientific questions, and proposed the measurements and means to obtain them so as to advance the state of knowledge during the years 2013–2022. Research in this field has sought to understand:

dynamical behaviour of the Sun and its heliosphere;

properties of the space environments of the Earth and other solar system bodies;

multiscale interaction between solar system plasmas and the interstellar medium; and

energy transport throughout the solar system and its impact on the Earth and other solar system bodies.

Research in solar and space plasma processes using observation, theory, laboratory studies, and numerical models has offered the prospect of understanding this interconnected system well enough to develop a predictive capability for operational support of civil and military space systems. We here describe the recommendations and strategic plans laid out in the 2013–2022 decadal survey as they relate to measurement capabilities and plasma physical research. We assess progress to date. We also identify further steps to achieve the Survey goals with an emphasis on plasma physical aspects of the program.

We study the turbulent transport of an ion cyclotron resonance heated (ICRH), MeV range minority ion species in tokamak plasmas. Such highly energetic minorities, which can be produced in the three ion minority heating scheme (Kazakov et al (2015) Nucl. Fusion55 032001), have been proposed to be used to experimentally study the confinement properties of fast ions without the generation of fusion alphas. We compare the turbulent transport properties of ICRH ions with that of fusion born alpha particles. Our theoretical predictions indicate that care must be taken when conclusions are drawn from experimental results: while the effect of turbulence on these particles is similar in terms of transport coefficients, differences in their distribution functions—ultimately their generation processes—make the resulting turbulent fluxes different.

Four numerical codes are employed to investigate the dynamics of scrape-off layer filaments in tokamak relevant conditions. Experimental measurements were taken in the MAST device using visual camera imaging, which allows the evaluation of the perpendicular size and velocity of the filaments, as well as the combination of density and temperature associated with the perturbation. A new algorithm based on the light emission integrated along the field lines associated with the position of the filament is developed to ensure that it is properly detected and tracked. The filaments are found to have velocities of the order of $1~\text{km}~{{\text{s}}^{-1}}$, a perpendicular diameter of around 2–3 cm and a density amplitude 2–3.5 times the background plasma. 3D and 2D numerical codes (the STORM module of BOUT++, GBS, HESEL and TOKAM3X) are used to reproduce the motion of the observed filaments with the purpose of validating the codes and of better understanding the experimental data. Good agreement is found between the 3D codes. The seeded filament simulations are also able to reproduce the dynamics observed in experiments with accuracy up to the experimental errorbar levels. In addition, the numerical results showed that filaments characterised by similar size and light emission intensity can have quite different dynamics if the pressure perturbation is distributed differently between density and temperature components. As an additional benefit, several observations on the dynamics of the filaments in the presence of evolving temperature fields were made and led to a better understanding of the behaviour of these coherent structures.

The electron injection process into a plasma-based laser wakefield accelerator can be influenced by modifying the parameters of the driver pulse. We present an experimental study on the combined effect of the laser pulse duration, pulse shape, and frequency chirp on the electron injection and acceleration process and the associated radiation emission for two different gas types—a 97.5% He and 2.5% N₂ mixture and pure He. In general, the shortest pulse duration with minimal frequency chirp produced the highest energy electrons and the most charge. Pulses on the positive chirp side sustained electron injection and produced higher charge, but lower peak energy electrons, compared with negatively chirped pulses. A similar trend was observed for the radiant energy. The relationship between the radiant energy and the electron charge remained linear over a threefold change in the electron density and was independent of the drive pulse characteristics. X-ray spectra showed that ionization injection of electrons into the wakefield generally produced more photons than self-injection for all pulse durations/frequency chirp and had less of a spread in the number of photons around the peak x-ray energy.

The poloidal dependence of the drift-wave turbulence characteristics is investigated at the FT-2 tokamak by radial correlation Doppler reflectometry (RCDR) technique and using the full distribution function global gyrokinetic modelling by ELMFIRE code. The poloidal variation of the turbulence radial correlation length from 0.2–0.55 cm is demonstrated both by measurement and computation. The turbulence correlation length rapidly decreases from the top of the poloidal cross-section to the high field side and then steadily grows in the poloidal direction. A well-pronounced excess of the turbulence radial correlation length in deuterium over its value in hydrogen discharges is demonstrated.

As part of the verification and validation of a newly developed non-steady-state orbit-following Monte-Carlo code, application studies of time dependent neutron rates have been made for a specific shot in the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) using 3D fields representing vacuum resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) and toroidal field (TF) ripples. The time evolution of density, temperature and rotation rate in the application of the code to MAST are taken directly from experiment. The calculation results approximately agree with the experimental data. It is also found that a full orbit-following scheme is essential to reproduce the neutron rates in MAST.

The pellet-induced snake oscillation was observed by soft x-ray (SXR) diagnostic in EAST for the first time after a fueling-sized pellet penetrated the q  =  1 surface. The snake phenomenon has a long lifetime with a helicity of m  =  1 and n  =  1. Basic behaviors of the snake, including the triggering condition, interaction with the sawtooth and snake rotation frequency, were discussed in detail by multiple core diagnostics. The snake location was also analyzed through observation of the vertical SXR arrays and raw SXR brightness profiles. It is clear that the snake resided in a broad region between the magnetic axis and the q  =  1 surface derived from equilibrium reconstruction. This investigation is beneficial for the understanding of the snake formation for EAST and future devices, like ITER and DEMO.

Turbulence in fluids and plasmas is ubiquitous in Nature and in the laboratory. Contrary to the importance of the 'scale-free' nature of cascade in neutral fluid turbulence, the turbulence in plasma is characterised by dynamics of distinct length scales. The cross-scale interactions can be highly non-symmetric so as to generate the plasma turbulence structures. Here we report that the system of hyper-fine electron-temperature-gradient (ETG) fluctuations and microscopic drift-wave (DW) fluctuations is strongly influenced by the sign of the gradient of the radial electric field through multiscale nonlinear interactions. The selective suppression effects by radial electric field inhomogeneity on DW mode induce a new route to modify ETG mode. This suppression mechanism shows disparity with respect to the sign of the radial electric field inhomogeneity, which can be driven by turbulence, so that it could be a new source for symmetry breaking in the turbulence structure formation in plasmas.

It is not fully understood how electromagnetic waves propagate through plasma density fluctuations when the size of the fluctuations is comparable with the wavelength of the incident radiation. In this paper, the perturbing effect of a turbulent plasma density layer on a traversing microwave beam is simulated with full-wave simulations. The deterioration of the microwave beam is calculated as a function of the characteristic turbulence structure size, the turbulence amplitude, the depth of the interaction zone and the size of the waist of the incident beam. The maximum scattering is observed for a structure size on the order of half the vacuum wavelength. The scattering and beam broadening was found to increase linearly with the depth of the turbulence layer and quadratically with the fluctuation strength. Consequences for experiments and 3D effects are considered.

Generation of ultra-short betatron x-rays by laser-accelerated electron beams is of great research interest as it has many applications. In this paper, we propose a scheme for obtaining bright betatron x-rays by applying external wiggler magnetic field in the laser wakefield to resonantly drive the betatron oscillations of the accelerated electrons therein. This results in a significant enhancement of the betatron oscillation amplitude and generation of bright x-rays with high photon energy. The scheme is demonstrated using two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation and discussed using a simple analytical model.

The empirical Bohm–gyro-Bohm (BgB) transport model implemented in the JETTO code is used to predictively simulate the purely Ohmic (OH), L-mode current-ramp-down phase of three JET hybrid pulses, which combine two different ramp rates with two different electron densities (at the beginning of the ramp). The modelling is discussed, namely the strategy to reduce as much as possible the number of free parameters used to benchmark the model predictions against the experimental results. Hence, keeping the gas puffing rate as measured whilst controlling the line-averaged electron density via the recycling coefficient (which in the modelling is taken at the separatrix instead of the wall), one of the many possible ways to fix the total particle source, it is shown that the BgB model reproduces well the experimental data, as far as both average quantities (plasma internal inductance and volume-averaged electron temperature) and profiles (electron density and temperature) are concerned, with relative errors remaining mostly below $20 \%$. The sensitivenesses with respect to the recycling coefficient, the ion effective charge, the energy of neutrals entering the plasma through the separatrix and the need to introduce a particle pinch are assessed; the necessity for a proper sawtooth model if experimental results are to be reproduced is also shown. The strong non-linear coupling in a OH plasma between density, temperature and current (essentially via interplay between the power-balance equation, Joule's heating with a temperature-dependent resistivity and the dependence of BgB transport coefficients on profile gradients) is put in evidence and analyzed in light of modelling results. It is still inferred from the modelling that the real value of the recycling coefficient at the separatrix (basically, the so-called fuelling efficiency times the actual recycling coefficient at the wall) must become close to one in the final stages of the discharges, when the gas puffing is switched off and so recycling comes to be the only source of particles. If the wall recycling remains close to one (as standard for tokamaks), this may indicate that the fuelling efficiency also approaches unity, apparently consistent with the observed fact that the plasma is pushed towards the machine wall at the end of the current ramps.