Magnetothermal instability in laser plasmas including hydrodynamic effects

Abstract

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Nernst advection and the field-generating thermal instability revisited

“…Indeed, theoretical and computational work reported elsewhere has shown that the Nernst effect is expected to drive a related field-compressing magneto-thermal instability in laser-plasmas under sufficiently magnetised conditions (Bissell et al 2010(Bissell et al , 2012.…”

“…and the approximate equality follows by considering values for the transport coefficients over a range of χ (Haines 1986b;Bissell et al 2012). Physically, therefore, our term N in the linearised induction equation 3.4 arises from differential advection of the field perturbation by heat-flow electrons moving down the zeroth-order temperature gradient, i.e., those electrons which account for lateral diffusive transport of the temperature perturbation Q in the linearised energy equation 3.3.…”

“…where D T and D R are the thermal and resistive diffusion coefficients respectively (Bissell et al 2012). The remaining terms arise from: i) differential thermal diffusion Q lateral to the perturbation (down zeroth-order temperature gradients); ii) differential Nernst advection N lateral to the perturbation; iii) divergent Righi-Leduc heat-flow C E ; and iv) magnetic field generation C I by the ∇T e × ∇n 0 mechanism; these are defined by…”

“…where K G is the source term describing coupling between the Righi-Leduc heat-flow C E and ∇T e × ∇n e field generation C I as described by Tidman & Shanny (1974) and Bissell et al (2012), viz…”

“…These fields strongly affect electron transport by suppressing the cross-field thermal conductivity (Braginskii 1965) and are thus key to understanding a range of laser-plasma interactions, including ongoing efforts to achieve controlled inertial confinement fusion (Glenzer et al 1999;Lindl et al 2004;Nilson et al 2006;Froula et al 2007;Li et al 2007a,b;Schurtz et al 2007;Froula et al 2009;Li et al 2009Li et al , 2013. Of special importance in such contexts is the role transport effects might play in driving instabilities, especially given that such instabilities are themselves often candidate mechanisms for producing the self-generated field (Weibel 1959;Tidman & Shanny 1974;Bol'shov et al 1974;Ogasawara et al 1980;Haines 1981;Bissell et al 2010Bissell et al , 2012Gao et al 2012;Manuel et al 2013).…”