612 papers
Plasma physics explores the behavior of the fourth state of matter, a superheated soup of charged particles that makes up most of the visible universe. From the fusion power we hope to harness on Earth to the glowing auroras and distant stars above, this field investigates how these energetic gases interact with magnetic fields and light. It is a dynamic area where extreme conditions reveal fundamental laws of nature in ways solid matter never can.
At Gist.Science, we bridge the gap between these complex discoveries and curious minds by processing every new preprint from arXiv in this category. We transform dense, technical research into clear, plain-language explanations alongside detailed summaries, ensuring that breakthroughs in plasma dynamics and fusion energy are accessible to everyone. Below are the latest papers in plasma physics, curated and simplified for your reading.
This paper extends the double-adiabatic equations to relativistic and ultrarelativistic regimes by analytically solving the drift kinetic equation and validating the resulting pressure evolution expressions through numerical simulations and particle-in-cell models, providing a framework applicable to various astrophysical plasmas.
This paper presents a general first-principle formalism based on system symmetries to derive adiabatic equations of state for both isotropic and anisotropic plasmas, specifically extending the double-adiabatic closure for collisionless, magnetised plasmas to the relativistic regime where the exact functional form depends on pressure anisotropy rather than following a simple power law.
This paper develops and validates geometric particle-in-cell methods that preserve the Hamiltonian structure and energy for hybrid plasma models featuring kinetic ions, Boltzmann electrons, and space-charge effects, demonstrating their effectiveness through numerical experiments on instabilities and wave phenomena.
This paper proposes and analyzes a flat-bottomed hollow-beam optical ponderomotive trap driven by a high-power CO laser, which effectively confines ultracold neutral plasmas and Rydberg atoms within a uniform dark region while minimizing collisional absorption to enhance antimatter production and storage.
This study utilizes gyrokinetic simulations and reduced transport modeling of DIII-D pedestal equilibria to demonstrate that microtearing modes, rather than kinetic ballooning modes, act as the primary inter-ELM pressure limit in the mid-pedestal, thereby establishing a physics-based link between separatrix conditions, pedestal structure, and global confinement.
This paper presents a numerical study using the EPOCH code to demonstrate that sub-picosecond laser pulses driving concave hemispherical targets primarily accelerate protons via Target Normal Sheath Acceleration, resulting in energy-dependent focusing where the focal spot size and plane scale linearly with the target radius.
Numerical simulations of the Hasegawa-Wakatani equation reveal that resistive-drift-wave turbulence at small electron adiabaticity is dominated by vortex-density clumps that can couple into ballistic dipoles, thereby driving non-local plasma transport and potentially triggering other instabilities.
This paper presents a self-consistent numerical framework that integrates ion-energy-dependent secondary electron emission into circuit-plasma co-simulation via both strict and weak coupling schemes, enabling predictive modeling of voltage breakdown in high-voltage pulsed vacuum systems where traditional models fail.
This study utilizes MEGA simulations to demonstrate that low-frequency Alfvénic modes in a tokamak can exhibit nonlocal core-edge coupling, where an edge-localized antenna drive efficiently excites coherent quasi-modes in the central core through spatial channeling and volumetric focusing, even without exact continuum resonance.
This paper presents a portable, multi-GPU hybrid MPI+OpenMP implementation of the BIT1 Particle-in-Cell Monte Carlo code that leverages OpenMP target tasks, optimized memory layouts, and standardized I/O to achieve scalable, high-performance execution on heterogeneous exascale systems like Frontier.