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Effect of transverse magnetic field on laser

produced plasma expansion into vacuum

Article in Physics of Plasmas · August 2011

Impact Factor: 2.14 · DOI: 10.1063/1.3624493

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Djamila Bennaceur-Doumaz Mourad Djebli

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 PHYSICS OF PLASMAS 18, 084507 (2011)

Effect of transverse magnetic field on laser produced plasma expansion

into vacuum
D. Bennaceur-Doumaza) and M. Djeblib)
Centre de Développement des Technologies Avancées, B.P. 17 Baba Hassen, 16303 Algiers, Algeria
(Received 4 April 2011; accepted 18 July 2011; published online 19 August 2011)
A one-dimensional time-dependent magneto-hydrodynamic ideal model is used to investigate the
dynamics of initially magnetized laser produced plasma expansion into vacuum, in the context of
inertial fusion. The plasma is assumed to be fully ionized and in local thermodynamic equilibrium
(LTE), allowing all charged particles to have the same temperatures. Self-similar solution shows
that the density, velocity, and temperature increase with the strength of the magnetic field. The
transverse magnetic field causes significant changes in the plasma expansion dynamics, including
the plasma confinement. The plasma velocity increasing is also observed and the temperature is
found to be larger compared to temperature in un-magnetized case. V C 2011 American Institute of

Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3624493]

The interaction which occurs between an externally The expanding plasma is governed by the usual three
applied magnetic field and a plasma is an important topic equations, of mass, momentum, and energy conservations
with applications ranging from astrophysics, fusion and combined with Maxwell equations and Ohm’s law for an
laser-produced plasma applications.1,2 In the laser ablation ideal flow.
process, which is widely used in laser micromachining, Maxwell equations are
pulsed laser deposition (PLD) of thin films, and in fusion
~ ~
plasma expansion, the presence of a magnetic field during
r ~ ¼  1 @B ; r
~^E ~ ¼  1 @ E þ 4p ~
~^B j: (1)
expansion can initiate various phenomena. They include con- c @t c @t c
version of plasma thermal energy into kinetic energy, plasma ~ and B~ are the total electric field and magnetic field, respec-
confinement, ion acceleration, emission enhancement and E
control of debris mitigation for extreme ultraviolet source, tively, ~
j is the induced current. ~ ~þ ~
j ¼ rðE ~ r is the
v ^ BÞ,
etc.3–12 For instance, in PLD the magnetic field is used to electrical conductivity.
confine and guide the laser produced plasma to the coating The plasma is considered as a non-dissipative and non-
location. It directs the plasma along the field lines to the sub- heat-conductive fluid with infinite conductivity, the magnetic
strate surface.13 In fact, the application of an external trans- field B is “frozen-in” into the plasma and the motion of the
verse magnetic field makes plasma parameters varying fluid will advect B and vice versa. In this case, the electric
field in the co-moving frame E ~0 must vanish. E ~0 ¼ E
~
significantly in applications involving plasma expansion in 1 ~ ¼ 0, c is the speed of light. Therefore,
vacuum. This expansion has been studied for several years þ c ð~
v ^ BÞ
both experimentally14–17 and theoretically.18–21 ~ ¼  1 ð~ ~
E v ^ BÞ: (2)
In this present brief communication, we investigate the- c
oretically the self-similar dynamics of noncollisional fusion
plasma interacting with an external magnetic field oriented The evolution of the magnetic field is obtained by taking the
transverse to the flow direction into vacuum, following the curl of the generalized Ohm’s law.
approach of Anderson et al.22 The latter calculated analyti- We consider a fully ionized plasma of electrons and
cally the self-similar expansion profiles of an initially half- ions with charge neutrality assumption: ne ¼ ni ¼ n, where ne
space, magnetized, quasi-neutral, and uniform plasma. Using and ni are the electron and ion density, respectively. The
a temperature equation, we calculate numerically the plasma plasma has a total mass density q ¼ Mn (M ¼ me þ mi  mi),
flow speed, density, and temperature within the plasma dis- me and mi are the electron and the ion mass, respectively,
placement in the external magnetic field. For this purpose, a and v is the plasma velocity. Both electrons and ions are sup-
one-fluid ideal magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) model is posed to be magnetized, and in LTE with the same tempera-
used to solve hydrodynamic equations with appropriate ini- ture Te ¼ Ti ¼ T.
tial conditions of expansion. Different values of b, the ratio In this work, for the sake of simplicity, we use a one-
of thermal pressure to magnetic field pressure, are used. dimensional description of the laser plasma expansion, into
vacuum, i.e., as long as lateral heat conduction can be
neglected. The expansion is assumed to take place in the x-
direction, so n ¼ n(x, t), ~ ~ ¼ ð0; 0; Bðx; tÞÞ
v ¼ ðvðx; tÞ; 0; 0Þ, B
a)
Electronic mail: doumaz@cdta.dz.
b) directed in the z-axis, the current density and the electric
Electronic mail: mdjebli@usthb.dz. Permanent address: Theoretical Phys.
Lab., Faculty of Physics, USTHB, B.P. 32 Bab Ezzouar, 16079 Algiers, field E ¼ Bv/c are entirely in the y direction. The expansion
Algeria. dynamics is described by Euler equations

1070-664X/2011/18(8)/084507/4/$30.00 18, 084507-1 C 2011 American Institute of Physics

V

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084507-2 D. Bennaceur-Doumaz and M. Djebli Phys. Plasmas 18, 084507 (2011)

@n @ðnvÞ If we treat all the derivative terms as independent variables

þ ¼ 0; (3) and the resulting set of equations as algebraic ones, then the
@t @x
nontrivial solution to the system of Eqs. (9) and (12) requires
@v @v 1 @P 1 1 @B2 that the determinant of their coefficients must vanish, i.e.,
þ v þ þ ¼ 0; (4)
@t @x Mn @x 8p Mn @x
~2¼ 10 ~ 2N~
ðn þ VÞ Tþ : (13)
3 b
@e @ðveÞ @P
þ þv ¼ 0; (5)
@t @x @x Combining Eq. (9) and Eq. (12), we easily obtain the follow-
ing equation22 used in Eq. (13):
and Faraday equation
N~ N~0
@B @ðvBÞ ¼ ¼ constant ¼ 1; (14)
þ ¼ 0: (6) B~ B~0
@t @x
meaning that the magnetic field is frozen in the plasma.
The above set of equations is closed by an equation of state
The positive root of Eq. (13) has been chosen; it corre-
assuming that the plasma behaves ideally, where e the
sponds to an expansion in the þ x direction. Initially, the irra-
energy density and P the pressure are related by P
diated target surface is located at x ¼ 0, and the target is in
¼ (c – 1)qe. For mono-atomic gases, c ¼ 5/3. Using the rela-
x < 0 region. Due to the expansion, the plasma density will
tion P ¼ (ne þ ni)T ¼ 2nT, T in energy units, the energy equa-
decrease and hence a rarefaction wave will propagate in the
tion describes the temperature evolution
x direction.24
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
@T @T 2 @v
þv þ ¼ 0: (7) 10 ~ 2N~
@t @x 3 @x  n þ V~ ¼ þ Tþ : (15)
3 b
In general, hydrodynamic equations describing the expansion
are difficult to solve numerically, but under certain assump- Using Eq. (15) and its derivation relatively to n, the set of
tions, these partial differential equations can be reduced to or-
differential equations is solved numerically. The evolution
dinary differential ones. This transformation is based on the of the plasma expanding into vacuum at t > 0 is studied. The
assumption that we have a self-similar solution, i.e., every initial time t ¼ 0 in our case corresponds to unperturbed
physical parameter distribution preserves its shape during
plasma with initial parameters N~0 ¼ 1 and V~0 ¼ 0. As a con-
expansion and there is no scaling parameter in the initial con-
sequence, we require that there should exist a point n0 at
ditions and in the equations.23 The time t and the space coor-
t  0 for which the plasma is unperturbed and at rest, such
dinate x appear only in the combination of (x/t). Indeed, this is
justified when charge quasi-neutrality in the plasma is that N~n0 ¼ 1 and V~n0 ¼ 0. From Eq. (15), it follows
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
imposed at the beginning of the process. n0 ¼ þ 10T~0 þ 2.
3 b
The self-similar solution of Eqs. (3)–(7) can be constructed The initial dimensionless temperature T~0 is found to
for a quasi-neutral plasma by using the ansatz given by have the value of 1/c ¼ 0.6 whatever the initial temperature
of the order of the keV.
N~ ¼ n=n0 ; V~ ¼ v=cs ; T~ ¼ T=Mc2s ; B~ ¼ B=B0 ; (8) Numerical results report in Figures 1–3, the behaviour of
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi the deduced plasma parameters as functions of the self-simi-
where cs ¼ cT0 =M is the sound velocity, T0 and n0 are the larity variable for different increasing initial values of mag-
initial temperature and density of the expanding plasma. netic field (decreasing b). We find that the interaction of the
We have chosen to write the differential equations in plasma with the transverse magnetic field causes significant
terms of a single dimensionless similarity variable n ¼ x/cst, changes in the plasma expansion dynamics compared to the
then field-free expansion. As the plasma begins to expand into the
~ ~ vacuum, the internal energy is transformed into kinetic
ðn þ VÞ ~ d N þ N~ d V ¼ 0; (9)
dn dn energy. In Figure 1, we observe that the velocity is increasing
linearly with self-similarity variable and the effect of increas-
dN~ ~ ~ ~ ~2 ing B is to increase the maximum velocity of the expanding
2T~ ~ d V þ 2N~ d T þ 1 B ¼ 0;
þ Nðn þ VÞ (10)
dn dn dn b dn front; it is the Lorentz force which accelerates the plasma to
move faster and further away from the target. It is found also
d V~ 3 ~ that above b ¼ 1 when the thermal pressure equals magnetic
T~ ~ d T ¼ 0;
þ ðn þ VÞ (11)
dn 2 dn pressure, B has almost no effect on the expansion. In fact, at
early time the plasma thermal pressure is much greater than
~ d B~ ~ dV~ magnetic pressure. Thus, the expansion becomes diamagnetic
ðn þ VÞ þB ¼ 0: (12)
dn dn in nature and will continue until the excluded magnetic energy
is comparable to the plasma energy.25
b ¼ 8pn0 cT0 =B20 , the ratio of thermal pressure n0cT0 to Regarding the profile given by the un-magnetized case
magnetic pressure B20 =8p, is the well-known beta parameter. corresponding to very large values of b, (b ¼ 100), Figures 2

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084507-3 Effect of transverse magnetic field
FIG. 1. Normalized velocities versus self-similarity variable for different
values of the magnetic field b.
and 3 show that the behaviour of plasma density and temper-
ature for B = 0 can be split into two parts, relatively to the
intersection point around n ¼ 0.
In Figure 2(a), for the first part, under the intersection
point, as B value increases, the plasma density depletion is
enhanced. Near the source, the main cause of expansion is
due to thermal pressure. Due to the Lorentz force which has
strong effects on the charged particles, the expansion is more
pronounced with growing B. For the second part Fig. 2(b),
beyond the intersection point, on the other hand, we obtained
FIG. 2. Normalized densities versus self-similarity variable for different values of the magnetic field for different values of b.
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Phys. Plasmas 18, 084507 (2011)
for any n, the increase of plasma density with increasing B.
Indeed, far away from the source, the mean cause of the
expansion can be attributed to the effect of magnetic energy
which leads to increasing magnetic confinement. As the
plasma expands freely across a magnetic field, with time the
plasma pressure decreases and hence the resistance offered
by magnetic field increases. When the pressure of the plasma
is greater than the magnetic pressure, the plasma is expected
to penetrate through the region occupied by the magnetic
field. The plasma confinement and stagnation take place
when the magnetic and the plasma pressures balance. The
confinement should increase the collision frequency of the
charged species both by confining them to a smaller volume
and by increasing their oscillation frequency. Hence, the
constraint of the cross-field expansion by the magnetic field
results in a high pressure in the confined plasma,8,12 leading
to a reduction in the ion depletion.
In Figure 3(a), temperatures are decreasing with mag-
netic field because both effects of thermal and magnetic pres-
sures are added to increase the cooling of the plasma during
expansion, while in Figure 3(b), far away from the source,
temperatures are found to be uniformly larger in the presence
of a B as compared with temperatures in un-magnetized
plasma corresponding to b ¼ 100. The increase is caused by
magnetic compression of the plasma.
Moreover, it is also pointed out that the end of the self-
similar expansion corresponds to vanishing density. This is
084507-4 D. Bennaceur-Doumaz and M. Djebli Phys. Plasmas 18, 084507 (2011)

FIG. 3. Normalized temperatures versus self-similarity variable for different values of the magnetic field b as function of the similarity variable.

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