Feiyu Li Presents On Hybrid Simulation Tool for Studying Laboratory Alfvén Waves
Feiyu Li Presents On Hybrid Simulation Tool for Studying Laboratory Alfvén Waves
New Mexico Consortium scientist Feiyu Li recently gave a presentation on Alfven wave physics at the 64th Annual Meeting of APS Division of Plasma Physics held October 17-21, 2022 in Spokane, Washington.
Alfven waves are of fundamental importance in space science, and they are ubiquitous in the solar wind and magnetosphere. Laboratory study of Alfven waves can help elucidate key Alfvenic processes in a controlled manner, that is also useful for interpreting spacecraft data.
Feiyu Li developed his plasma simulation tool to directly study and model laboratory Alfven waves. He based this simulation tool on the Large Plasma Device (LAPD), the primary device at the Basic Plasma Science Facility at UCLA, a national collaborative research facility for fundamental plasma physics.
This tool enables the first 3D simulations of nonlinear Alfven wave interactions with realistic LAPD-like wave injection, boundary conditions, and wave and plasma parameters (see the image for illustration).
More details can be found in Li’s recent two publications:
- F.-Y. Li, X.-R. Fu, and S. Dorfman, Parametric decay of Alfvénic wave packets in nonperiodic low-beta plasmas, The Astrophysical Journal 924, 33 (2022). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ac32c0
- F.-Y. Li, X.-R. Fu, and S. Dorfman, Hybrid simulation of Alfvén wave parametric decay instability in a laboratory relevant plasma, Physics of Plasmas, 29, 092108 (2022). https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/5.0100144
The work is mainly supported by an NSF/DOE partnership program under the grant No. DE-SC0021237.
In the same meeting, Li also gave a presentation on laser-driven compact particle accelerators which is another focus of his research.