Events at Physics |
Events on Monday, April 24th, 2023
- Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminar
- Dipole Traps for Non-neutral and Pair Plasma Studies
- Time: 12:00 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Matthew Stoneking, Lawrence University
- Abstract: The root source of the ubiquitous instabilities that lead to turbulence in magnetized plasmas can, in many cases, be traced to the asymmetry in the masses of the ions and electrons constituting the plasma. The APEX (A Positron-Electron eXPeriment) project aims to test predictions that a “pair plasma” composed of positively and negatively charged particles of equal mass should be remarkably stable to the micro-instabilities that seem universal to magnetized plasma. We are building a levitated dipole trap that uses a high-temperature superconducting coil along with a high-capacity accumulation system for positrons, to create the world’s first short Debye length magnetized electron-positron plasma. Experiments in support of this project are also underway to test the accessibility of long-lived thermal equilibrium states for pure electron plasma in a dipole field.