Low ion-velocity slowing down in a strongly magnetized plasma target

Energy loss of ions by electric-field fluctuations in a magnetized plasma

The results of a theoretical investigation of the energy loss of charged particles in a magnetized classical plasma due to the electric-field fluctuations are reported. The energy loss for a test particle is calculated through the linear-response theory. At vanishing magnetic field, the electric-field fluctuations lead to an energy gain of the charged particle for all velocities. It has been shown that in the presence of strong magnetic field, this effect occurs only at low velocities. In the case of high velocities, the test particle systematically loses its energy due to the interaction with a stochastic electric field. The net effect of the fluctuations is the systematic reduction of the total energy loss (i.e., the sum of the polarization and stochastic energy losses) at vanishing magnetic field and reduction or enhancement at strong field, depending on the velocity of the particle. It is found that the energy loss of the slow heavy ion contains an anomalous term that depends logarithmically on the projectile mass. The physical origin of this anomalous term is the coupling between the cyclotron motion of the plasma electrons and the long-wavelength, low-frequency fluctuations produced by the projectile ion. This effect may strongly enhance the stochastic energy gain of the particle.

Number-conserving linear-response study of low-velocity ion stopping in a collisional magnetized classical plasma

The results of a theoretical investigation of the low-velocity stopping power of ions in a magnetized collisional and classical plasma are reported. The stopping power for an ion is calculated through the linear-response (LR) theory. The collisions, which lead to a damping of the excitations in the plasma, are taken into account through a number-conserving relaxation time approximation in the LR function. In order to highlight the effects of collisions and magnetic field, we present a comparison of our analytical and numerical results obtained for nonzero damping or magnetic field with those for vanishing damping or magnetic field. It is shown that the collisions remove the anomalous friction obtained previously [Nersisyan et al., Phys. Rev. E 61, 7022 (2000)] for the collisionless magnetized plasmas at low ion velocities. One of the major objectives of this paper is to compare and to contrast our theoretical results with those obtained through a diffusion coefficient formulation based on the Dufty-Berkovsky relation evaluated for a magnetized one-component plasma modeled with target ions and electrons.

Wake effect and stopping power for a charged ion moving in magnetized two-component plasmas: two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation

A two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) model is proposed to study the wake field and stopping power induced by a nonrelativistic charged particle moving perpendicular to the external magnetic field in two-component plasmas. The effects of the magnetic field on the wake potential and the stopping due to the polarization of both the plasma ions and electrons are discussed. The velocity fields of plasma ions and electrons are investigated, respectively, in the weak and strong magnetic field cases. Our simulation results show that in the case of weak magnetic field and high ion velocity, the wakes exhibit typical V-shaped cone structures and the opening cone angles decrease with the increasing ion velocity. As the magnetic field becomes strong, the wakes lose their typical V-shaped structures and become highly asymmetrical. Similar results can be obtained in the case of low ion velocity and strong magnetic field. In addition, stopping power is calculated and compared with previous one-dimensional and full three-dimensional PIC results.