Developments in the real time control hardware on TCV paired with the flexibility of plasma shaping and ECRH actuators are opening many opportunities to perform real time experiments and develop algorithms and methods for fusion applications. The ability to control MHD instabilities is particularly important for achieving high performance fusion plasmas and EC is envisaged as a key actuator in ...

The understanding of laser beam propagation through underdense plasmas is of vital importance to laser-plasma interaction experiments, as well as being a fundamental physics issue. Formation of plasma channels has numerous applications including table-top xray lasers and laser-plasma-produced particle accelerators. The fast ignitor concept, for example, requires the formation of an evacuated ch...

Presented here are the first kinetic two-dimensional Vlasov– Fokker–Planck calculations of inertial confinement fusion-related laser–plasma interactions, to include self-consistent magnetic fields, hydrodynamic plasma expansion and anisotropic electron pressure. An underdense plasma, reminiscent of the gas fill of a hohlraum, is heated by a laser speckle with Iλ2 = 1.0× 1015Wcmμm2 and radius w0...

We present the first multievent study of the spatial and temporal structuring of the aurora to provide statistical evidence of the near-Earth plasma instability which causes the substorm onset arc. Using data from ground-based auroral imagers, we study repeatable signatures of along-arc auroral beads, which are thought to represent the ionospheric projection of magnetospheric instability in the...

Results from time-dependent two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of the global heliosphere show that drag between the plasma ions and the interstellar neutrals, caused by charge-exchange collisions, causes the heliopause to be hydrodynamically unstable. Both ions and neutrals are treated as uids coupled by charge-exchange collisions. The neutral-ion drag proportional to the plasma density i...

A low-frequency instability varying from 10 to 20 kHz has been discovered in the presence of a current-free double layer !DL" in a low-pressure expanding helicon plasma. The instability is observed using various electrostatic probes, such as Langmuir probes floating or biased to ion saturation and emissive probes measuring the plasma potential. A retarding field energy analyzer measuring the io...

The onset of an electron parametric instability and 3/2 harmonic generation in variable-scale-length plasmas on solid surfaces using femtosecond pulses is observed. With the intensity approaching 10(18) W/cm(2), the instability threshold is already reached at plasma scale lengths of the order of the laser wavelength. A well-collimated harmonic emission with unusually broad spectrum is obtained.