Search

Magnetic reconnection can occur when two plasmas, having anti-parallel components of the magnetic field, encounter each other. In the reconnection plane, the anti-parallel component of the field is annihilated and its energy released in the plasma. Here, we investigate through laboratory experiments the reconnection between two flux tubes that are not strictly anti-parallel. Compression of the anti-parallel component of the magnetic field is observed, as well as a decrease of the reconnection efficiency. Concomitantly, we observe delayed plasma heating and enhanced particle acceleration. Three-dimensional hybrid simulations support these observations and highlight the plasma heating inhibition and reconnection efficiency reduction for these obliquely oriented flux tubes., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Magnetized laser-produced plasmas are central to many novel laboratory astrophysics and inertial confinement fusion studies, as well as in industrial applications. Here we provide the first complete description of the three-dimensional dynamics of a laser-driven plasma plume expanding in a 20 T transverse magnetic field. The plasma is collimated by the magnetic field into a slender, rapidly elongating slab, whose plasma-vacuum interface is unstable to the growth of the "classical," fluidlike magnetized Rayleigh-Taylor instability.

A review of recent theoretical calculations of blackbody radiation (BBR) shifts in optical atomic clocks is presented. We summarize previous results for monovalent ions that were obtained by a relativistic all-order single-double method, where all single and double excitations of the Dirac- Fock wave function are included to all orders of perturbation theory. A recently developed method for accurate calculations of BBR shifts in divalent atoms is then presented. This approach combines the relativistic all-order method and the configuration interaction method, which provides for accurate treatment of correlation corrections in atoms with two valence electrons. Calculations of the BBR shifts in B+, Al+, and In+ have enabled us to reduce the present fractional uncertainties in the frequencies of their clock transitions as measured at room temperature: to 4 × 10-19 for Al+ and 10-18 for B+ and In+. These uncertainties approach recent estimates of the limits of precision of currently proposed optical atomic clocks. We discuss directions of future theoretical developments for reducing clock uncertainties resulting from blackbody radiation shifts.