Vol 44, No 1 (2018)

Some results from studies of microwave discharges in heavy hydrocarbons are presented. Microwave energy was introduced into liquid hydrocarbon via a coaxial line. The pressure above the liquid surface was equal to the atmospheric pressure. The discharge was ignited in a mixture of argon and hydrocarbon vapor. Argon was supplied through a channel in the central conductor of the coaxial line. The emission spectra of discharges in different liquid hydrocarbons were studied. It is shown that the emission spectra mainly consist of sequences of Swan bands, while radiation of other plasma components is on the noise level. Spectra of plasma emission are presented for discharges in liquid n-heptane, nefras, and C-9 oil used to produce chemical fibers. The rotational (gas) and vibrational temperatures are determined by processing the observed spectra.

Experimental results on the radial distribution of the nanosecond dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) current in flat millimeter air gaps under atmospheric pressure and natural humidity of 40–60% at a voltage rise rate at the electrodes of 250 V/ns are presented. The time delay of the appearance of discharge currents was observed to increase from the center to the periphery of the air gap at discharge gap heights above 3 mm, which correlated with the appearance of constricted channels against the background of the volume DBD plasma. Based on the criterion of the avalanche-streamer transition, it is found out that the development of a nanosecond DBD in air gaps of 1–3 mm occurs by the streamer mechanism.

In a single-barrier discharge with voltage sharpening and low gas consumption (up to 1 L/min), plane atmospheric pressure plasma jets with a width of up to 3 cm and length of up to 4 cm in air are formed in the slit geometry of the discharge zone. The energy, temperature, and spectral characteristics of the obtained jets have been measured. The radiation spectrum contains intense maxima corresponding to vibrational transitions of the second positive system of molecular nitrogen N₂ (C³Π_u → B³Π_g) and comparatively weak transition lines of the first positive system of the N₂⁺ ion (B²Σ_u⁺ → X²Σ_g). By an example of inactivation of the Staphylococcus aureus culture (strain ATCC 209), it is shown that plasma is a source of chemically active particles providing the inactivation of microorganisms.

The presence of strong electric fields in the sheath region of laboratory complex plasma induces an ion drift and perturbs the field around dust grains. The downstream focusing of ions leads to the formation of oscillatory kind of attractive wake potential which superimpose with the normal Debye-Hückel (DH) potential. The structural properties of complex plasma and diffusion coefficient of dust grains in the presence of such a wake potential have been investigated using Langevin dynamics simulation in the subsonic regime of ion flow. The study reveals that the diffusion of dust grains is strongly affected by the ion flow, so that the diffusion changes its character in the wake potential to the DH potential dominant regimes. The dependence of the diffusion coefficient on the parameters, such as the neutral pressure, dust grain size, ion flow velocity, and Coulomb coupling parameter, have been calculated for the subsonic regime by using the Green-Kubo expression, which is based on the integrated velocity autocorrelation function. It is found that the diffusion and the structural property of the system is intimately connected with the interaction potential and significantly get affected in the presence of ion flow in the subsonic regime.

The characteristics of sheath in a plasma system containing q-nonextensive electrons, cold fluid ions, and Boltzmann-distributed negative ions are investigated. A modified Bohm sheath criterion is derived by using the Sagdeev pseudopotential technique. It is found that the proposed Bohm velocity depends on the degree of nonextensivity (q), negative ion temperature to nonextensive electron temperature ratio (σ), and negative ion density (B). Using the modified Bohm sheath criterion, the sheath characteristics, such as the spatial distribution of the potential, positive ion velocity, and density profile, have been numerically investigated, which clearly shows the effect of negative ions, as well as the nonextensive distribution of electrons. It is found that, as the nonextensivity parameter and the electronegativity increases, the electrostatic sheath potential increases sharply and the sheath width decreases.

In ohmically heated (OH) plasma with low recycling, an improved particle confinement (IPC) mode is established during gas puffing. However, after gas puffing is switched off, this mode is retained only for about 100 ms, after which an abrupt phase transition into the low particle confinement (LPC) mode occurs in the entire plasma cross section. During such a transition, energy transport due to heat conduction does not change. The phase transition in OH plasma is similar to the effect of density pump-out from the plasma core, which occurs after electron cyclotron heating (ECH) is switched on. Analysis of the measured plasma pressure profiles in the T-10 tokamak shows that, after gas puffing in the OH mode is switched off, the plasma pressure profile in the IPC stage becomes more peaked and, after the peakedness exceeds a certain critical value, the IPC-LPC transition occurs. Similar processes are also observed during ECH. If the pressure profile is insufficiently peaked during ECH, then the density pump-out effect comes into play only after the critical peakedness of the pressure profile is reached. In the plasma core, the density and pressure profiles are close to the corresponding canonical profiles. This allows one to derive an expression for the particle flux within the canonical profile model and formulate a criterion for the IPC-LPC transition. The time evolution of the plasma density profile during phase transitions was simulated for a number of T-10 shots with ECH and high recycling. The particle transport coefficients in the IPC and LPC phases, as well as the dependences of these coefficients on the ECH power, are determined.

The feasibility of dipole radiation of terahertz waves under the action of a femtosecond laser pulse on a cluster is demonstrated theoretically. It is shown that the dipole mechanism of terahertz radiation generation plays a decisive role in the interaction of a laser pulse with small-size clusters with a sufficiently high electron collision frequency. The dependences of the spectral, angular, energetic, and spatiotemporal characteristics of the terahertz signal on the density of free electrons in the cluster plasma under the conditions in which dipole radiation is dominant are investigated. It is shown that the energy of terahertz radiation is maximal under the resonance conditions, when the laser frequency coincides with the eigenfrequency of a spherical cluster.

The delay time to breakdown of a cold-cathode thyratron with a trigger unit based on an auxiliary steady-state low-current glow discharge was studied experimentally. The device was connected into the electric circuit according to the circuit of a classical thyratron. The main experiments were carried out at low working gas (deuterium) pressures and high anode voltages of about 40 kV. It is found that, during the triggering current pulse or commutation of the main discharge current, the auxiliary discharge in the trigger unit passes from the stable segment of the current-voltage characteristic into the regime with a reduced operating voltage. Spontaneous reverse transitions from this regime are also possible. On the other hand, the initial conditions of the auxiliary discharge affect the delay time to thyratron breakdown and lead to the jitter in the total delay time to breakdown relative to the triggering pulse. The total delay time amounts to 100 ns, the jitter in delay time being within 15 ns.

The spatial distributions of the magnetic field, plasma density, and current at distances of (20–400)R_S from the Sun (where R_S is the solar radius) are investigated within a stationary axisymmetric MHD model of the solar wind (SW) at all latitudes in the inertial frame of reference with the origin at the center of the Sun. The model takes into account differential (with respect to the heliolatitude) rotation of the Sun and full corotation of plasma inside a boundary sphere of radius 20RS, which breaks down beyond this sphere. Self-consistent distributions of the plasma density, current, and magnetic field in the SW are obtained by numerically solving a set of time-independent MHD equations in spherical coordinates. It is demonstrated that the calculated results do not contradict observational data and describe a gradual transition from the fast SW at high heliolatitudes to the slow SW at low heliolatitudes, as well as the steepening of the profiles of the main SW characteristics with increasing distance from the Sun. The obtained dependences extend understanding of the SW structure at low and high latitudes and agree with the well-known Parker model in the limit of a small Ampère force.

The effect of pair ions on the formation of rogue waves in a six-component plasma composed of two hot and one colder electron component, hot ions, and pair ions is studied. The kappa distribution, which provides an unambiguous replacement for a Maxwellian distribution in space plasmas, is connected with nonextensive statistical mechanics and provides a continuous energy spectrum. Hence, the colder and one component of the hotter electrons is modeled by kappa distributions and the other hot electron component, by a q-nonextensive distribution. It is found that the rogue wave amplitude is different for various pair-ion components. The magnitude, however, increases with increasing spectral index and nonextensive parameter q. These results may be useful in understanding the basic characteristics of rogue waves in cometary plasmas.

Results are presented from experimental studies of the implosion of twisted nested arrays in which the wires of the outer and inner arrays are twisted about the array axis in opposite directions (clockwise and counterclockwise). Experiments with twisted arrays were carried out at the Angara-5-1 facility at currents of up to 4 MA. The currents through the arrays were switched either simultaneously or the current pulse through the outer array was delayed by 10–15 ns with the help of an anode spark gap. It is shown that, in such arrays, the currents flow along the inclined wires and, accordingly, there are both the azimuthal and axial components of the discharge current. The process of plasma implosion in twisted arrays depends substantially on the value of the axial (longitudinal) magnetic field generated inside the array by the azimuthal currents. Two-dimensional simulations of the magnetic field in twisted nested arrays were performed in the (r, z) geometry with allowance for the skin effect in the discharge electrodes. It is shown that, depending on the geometry of the discharge electrodes, different configurations of the magnetic field can be implemented inside twisted nested arrays. The calculated magnetic configurations are compared with the results of measurements of the magnetic field inside such arrays. It is shown that the configuration of the axial magnetic field inside a twisted nested array depends substantially on the distribution of the azimuthal currents between the inner and outer arrays.

This paper is a review of studies on the generation of low-energy high-current electron beams in electron guns with a plasma anode and an explosive-emission cathode. The problems related to the initiation of explosive electron emission under plasma and the formation and transport of high-current electron beams in plasma-filled systems are discussed consecutively. Considerable attention is given to the nonstationary effects that occur in the space charge layers of plasma. Emphasis is also placed on the problem of providing a uniform energy density distribution over the beam cross section, which is of critical importance in using electron beams of this type for surface treatment of materials. Examples of facilities based on low-energy high-current electron beam sources are presented and their applications in materials science and practice are discussed.