Circular polarization (CP) provides an invaluable probe into the underlying plasma content of relativistic jets. CP can be generated within the jet through a physical process known as linear birefringence. This is a physical mechanism through which initially linearly polarized emission produced in one region of the jet is attenuated by Faraday rotation as it passes through other regions of the ...

We investigate the launching and stability of extragalactic jets through nonlinear magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation and linear eigenmode analysis. In the simulations of jet evolution, a small-scale equilibrium magnetic arcade is twisted by a differentially rotating accretion disk. These simulations produce a collimated outflow which is unstable to the current driven m = 1 kink mode for low ...

An optical flow method is applied to the study of several fusion plasma relevant issues, including plasma wall interactions. A multi-resolution coarse-to-fine procedure is used in order to cope with large displacements of objects between consecutive frames, characteristic of plasma images captured by JET fast visible camera. Occlusion modeling is also implemented. The method is able to provide ...

We report on the observation of rapid particle acceleration in numerical simulations of relativistic jet-plasma interactions and discuss the underlying mechanisms. The dynamics of a charge-neutral, narrow, electron-positron jet propagating through an unmagnetized electron-ion plasma was investigated using a three-dimensional, electromagnetic, particle-in-cell computer code. The interaction exci...

Non-abelian energy loss in quark gluon plasma is shown to lead to novel hadron ratio suppression patterns in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions. We apply recent (GLV) estimates for the gluon radiative energy loss, which increases linearly with the jet energy up to E < 20 GeV and depends quadratically on the nuclear radius, R. The K/π ratio is found to be most sensitive to the initial density ...

High-pressure gas jets of neon and argon are used to mitigate the three principal damaging effects of tokamak disruptions: thermal loading of the divertor surfaces, vessel stress from poloidal halo currents and the buildup and loss of relativistic electrons to the wall. The gas jet penetrates as a neutral species through to the central plasma at its sonic velocity. The injected gas atoms increa...

JET data for the correlations between pedestal plasma temperature and density with the frequency of different type ELMs are analyzed in the framework of a classical Focker-Planck approach. In first approximation we derive a functional dependence in steady state of ELMs assuming equality between the outward flux of plasma from the core and the loss of plasma from the pedestal into the SOL. In th...

We present preliminary results from two computational magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) studies of magnetic nozzles. The first study models the magnetic nozzle expansion of a plasma into a near vacuum with a resistive MHD solver. Results from resistive MHD simulations suggest that further model development is necessary to replicate experimental results within the desired physical regime. The second stu...

The self-organized discharge behaviour occurring in a non-thermal radio-frequency plasma jet in rare gases at atmospheric pressure was investigated. The frequency of the azimuthal rotation of filaments in the active plasma volume and their inclination were measured along with the gas temperature under varying discharge conditions. The gas flow and heating were described theoretically by a three...