Theoretical astrophysics and plasma physics at RPC

Abstract:

Differential rotation is induced in tokamak plasmas when an underlying symmetry of the governing gyrokinetic-Maxwell system of equations is broken. One such symmetry-breaking mechanism is considered here: the turbulent acceleration of particles along the mean magnetic field. This effect, often referred to as the ‘parallel nonlinearity’, has been implemented in the δf gyrokinetic code stella and used to study the dependence of turbulent momentum transport on the plasma size and on the strength of the turbulence drive. For JET-like parameters with a wide range of driving temperature gradients, the momentum transport induced by the inclusion of turbulent acceleration is similar to or smaller than the ratio of the ion Larmor radius to the plasma minor radius. This low level of momentum transport is explained by demonstrating an additional symmetry that prohibits momentum transport when the turbulence is driven far above marginal stability.

Abstract:

With the advent of high power lasers, new opportunities have opened up for simulating astrophysical processes in the laboratory. We show that 2nd-order Fermi acceleration can be directly investigated at the National Ignition Facility, Livermore. This requires measuring the momentumspace diffusion of 3 MeV protons produced within a turbulent plasma generated by a laser. Treating Fermi acceleration as a biased diffusion process, we show analytically that a measurable broadening of the initial proton distribution is then expected for particles exiting the plasma.

Abstract:

We present a semi-analytic model for self-consistently evolving a population of globular clusters (GCs) in a given host galaxy across cosmic time. We compute the fraction of GCs still hosting intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) at a given redshift in early and late type galaxies of different masses and sizes, and the corresponding rate of tidal disruption events (TDEs), both main-sequence (MS) and white dwarf (WD) stars. We find that the integrated TDE rate for the entire GC population can exceed the corresponding rate in a given galactic nucleus and that $\sim 90$% of the TDEs reside in GCs within a maximum radius of $\sim 2-15$ kpc from the host galaxy's center. This suggests that observational efforts designed to identify TDEs should not confine themselves to galactic nuclei alone, but should also consider the outer galactic halo where massive old GCs hosting IMBHs would reside. Indeed, such off-centre TDEs as predicted here may already have been observed. MS TDE rates are more common than WD TDE rates by a factor 30 (100) at $z\leq 0.5$ ($z=2$). We also calculate the rate of IMBH-SBH mergers across cosmic time, finding that the typical IMRI rate at low redshift is of the order of $\sim 0.5-3$ Gpc$^{-3}$ yr$^{-1}$, which becomes as high as $\sim 100$ Gpc$^{-3}$ yr$^{-1}$ near the peak of GC formation. Advanced LIGO combined with VIRGO, KAGRA, ET and LISA will be able to observe the bottom-end and top-end of the IMBH population, respectively.