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International Journal for Basic Sciences and Social Sciences (IJBSS), 2(1), 2013, 107-111
Published by Research Foundation for Basic Sciences and Social Sciences (RFBSS), India

ISSN: 2319-2968
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WEIBEL INSTABILITY DUE TO ULTRA INTENSE LASER PLASMA INTERACTION RELEVANT TO FUSION
Anshuman Borthakur1, Nilakshi Das2 Department of Physics, Tezpur University, Tezpur - 784028, Assam, India 1 E-mail:anshu.borthakur@gmail.com ______________________________________________________________________________________

ARTICLE INFO
Received: Oct 03, 2012 Accepted: Dec 29, 2012

ABSTRACT
With the recent development of laser technology, the laser driven inertial confinement fusion has gained a lots of interest from the fusion community. Consequently it becomes also necessary to understand various physical processes including instabilities that may arise due to interaction of laser and plasma. In our present work we have studied the interaction of ultra-intense laser pulse with a rectangular plasma slab for both underdense and over-dense case and observed the self generated multi mega-gauss magnetic field due to Weibel instability. The study of this kind of instability is very important in connection with fusion basically in fast ignition scheme (FIS) where it plays a very crucial role in heat deposition process from laser to fusion source.

KEYWORDS
Fusion Laser-plasma Weibel instability

International Journal for Basic Sciences and Social Sciences (IJBSS). All rights reserved. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. Introduction With the growing need of energy by mankind, people are now thinking of an alternative source of energy to replace the conventional energy sources like fossil fuels. Fusion is one of the best competitors in the present scenario of power generation, with its advantage like potential safety, environment friendly and economically suitable energy source. A large number of R & D work has been going on worldwide to validate fusion technology, in which India is also participating actively. Fusion is the technology by which sun produces its energy and hence it is a natural fusion reactor. The most efficient fusion reaction on earth is the D-T fusion reaction. To initiate fusion very high temperature is required, and as a result all the fuel will be in the plasma state. Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) is one of the best available techniques for fusion in which reactions are initiated by heating and compressing a fuel target, mostly consisting of a mixture of deuterium and tritium. The compression and heating of the target is usually done by laser beams using a Fast Ignitor Scheme (FIS) [1, 2]. In the FIS the high intense laser pulse propagating through a high density fusion fuel plasma, delivers energy to high energy electrons. These highly energetic particles then transport the energy to the center of the compressed core and ignite the fuel there. It was found that the interaction of ultra intense laser pulse with plasma leads to the self generation of multi mega gauss magnetic fields through weibel instability [3]. This instability plays an important role in stopping the hot electrons and energy deposition mechanism in the core [4 7]. The propagation of a short laser pulse in an overdense plasma has been widely examined theoretically as well as experimentally [1, 19, 8-11]. The production of self excited large magnetic fields within the plasma by ultra intense laser pulse has been observed by computer simulation [1, 12] and several experiments have also been conducted to inspect the role of Weibel instability in different scenerios [13]. The weibel instability was proposed by E.S.Weibel [3] in 1959, which results in a purely growing electromagnetic mode in plasma even in the absence of external magnetic field due to electron temperature anisotropy. It was found that high intensity laser pulses while interacts with plasma drives the electron in the forward direction making the electron quiver velocity relativistic. While these high energetic electron travels through the background plasma, a return electron current flows in the opposite direction to maintain the global charge neutrality. These counter_______________________________________________________________________________________________ 107

Anshuman Borthakur & Nilakshi Das, IJBSS, 2(1), 2013, 107-111 _______________________________________________________________________________________________ propagating electron beams produces anisotropy in the plasma temperature and eventually leads to weibel instability. The physical mechanism of weibel instability in the presence of counter-streaming electron beams in plasma was proposed by B.D.Fried [14]. The growth rate for the weibel instability in the presence of two components of non- relativistic electrons streaming (with speed of ve) relative to each other can be given by-

pe ve

c , where pe 4 e 2 ne0 me

is the electron plasma frequency, e, me and ne0 are the magnitudes of

the electron charge, the mass, and the unperturbed electron number density respectively and c is the speed of light in vacuum. Again the growth rate of weibel instability with ultra-relativistic electron beams following Yoon and Davidson [15, 16] can be given by-

pe

, where 1 v

c
2

is the relativistic gamma factor.

The magnetic field generated by Weibel instability always lies in a plane perpendicular to the initial anisotropy axis. The instability grows until all the free energy stored in velocity space anisotropy is transferred to the magnetic field energy or we can say that the instability gets saturated by the transverse energy spread of the high energy electrons [17]. In this instability the energy transferred to the magnetic field could be comparable to the total kinetic energy of the plasma and hence it is very powerful in nature [7]. In this work, we had made an attempt to understand and compare the process of development of self generated multi mega gauss magnetic field through weibel instability in both overdense and underdense plasma due to ultra intense laser plasma interaction with the help a fully relativistic three dimensional particle in cell (PIC) [18] code. 2. Simulation In order to investigate the self generated fields, we have performed an electromagnetic 3D, fully relativistic PIC simulation. The size of the simulation domain is 5m X 5m X 10m. The length of the plasma inside the box is 6m along Z with a vacuum of 2m from Z = 0 and Z= 10m face [Fig. 1]. The simulations are performed for a p-polarized laser light (Ex, By) with laser wavelength 0.8 m and laser period 50 fs and laser intensity ~ 1021 watt/ cm2 for both n/nc = 1(overdense) and n/nc = 0.001 (underdense) case. Where nc is the critical density corresponding to the incident laser light. The laser light is incident at the center of the z = 0 face. The other parameters used for our simulation are initial temperature for ions = 0.8 KeV, initial temperature for electrons = 1 KeV with electron-ion mass ratio of 1/1836, number of macro-particles is 106 for both electrons and ions, time step = 0.03pe-1 and spatial step = 0.35 pe-1. The size of the grid in all the three direction is 83 X 83 X 166. Periodic boundary conditions are applied in the transverse directions and absorbing boundary condition for fields and a thermal reflection boundary for particles in Z - direction.

Laser

(2m)

Plasma(6m)

(2m)

Fig 1: Simulation Box

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Anshuman Borthakur & Nilakshi Das, IJBSS, 2(1), 2013, 107-111 _______________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. Results and Discussion The variation of the x-component of the magnetic field (Bx) at different time step on the grids is shown in Fig. 2 for both a) n/nc = 0.001 and b) n/nc =1. The component of the magnetic field, Bx is due to Weibel generated field as the laser magnetic field is in the y - direction. The figure clearly shows the existence of self generated large scale magnetic fields in multimega-gauss range due to weibel instability. Further from the figure it is seen that the value of the maximum magnetic field as well as the frequency of the oscillating self generated field is higher in the case of overdense case as both these factors varies directly as the density of the plasma. Fig. 3 shows the variation of magnetic field for both n/nc = 0.001 and n/nc = 1 at 10000 time step which shows the difference in the magnetic value for both the cases. Fig. 4 shows the variation of weibel generated magnetic field energy with time for a) n/nc = 0.001 and b) n/nc = 1 and its non-linear saturation with time. From the figure it is also observed that the weibel instability grows at a faster rate in the case of overdense plasma.

(a)

(b)

Fig. 2: Magnetic Field Bx at different grid points for a) n/nc = 0.001 and b) n/nc = 1

Fig. 3: Magnetic Field Bx for both n/nc = 0.001 and n/nc = 1 at Time = 10000

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Anshuman Borthakur & Nilakshi Das, IJBSS, 2(1), 2013, 107-111 _______________________________________________________________________________________________

Log (B2/2) (in CGS units)

(a)

(b)

Time Step Fig.4: Variation of Magnetic Field Energy and non-linear saturation of Weibel instability for a) n/nc = 0.001 and b) n/nc = 1

4. Conclusion In our simulation we have clearly observed the generation of large magnetic fields due to Weibel instability for both overdense and underdense plasma. The instability shows a non linear saturation with time which is due to thermal equilibrium of the electrons as a result of pitch angle scattering of electrons. We have also seen from the figures that the maximum value of magnetic field generated increases with the density of the plasma and also the growth rate.

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