Chirp-driven giant phase space vortices

Abstract

In a collisionless, unbounded, one-dimensional plasma, modelled using periodic boundary conditions, formation of steady state phase space coherent structures or phase space vortices (PSV) is investigated. Using a high resolution one-dimensional Vlasov-Poisson solver based on piecewise-parabolic advection scheme, the formation of giant PSV is addressed numerically. For an infinitesimal external drive amplitude and wavenumber k, we demonstrate the existence of a window of chirped external drive frequency that leads to the formation of giant PSV. The linear, small amplitude, external drive, when chirped, is shown to couple effectively to the plasma and increase both streaming of “untrapped” and “trapped” particle fraction. The steady state attained after the external drive is turned off and is shown to lead to a giant PSV with multiple extrema and phase velocities, with excess density fraction, defined as the deviation from the Maxwellian background, Δn/n0≃20%−25%. It is shown that the process depends on the chirp time duration Δt. The excess density fraction Δn/n0, which contains both trapped and untrapped particle contribution, is also seen to scale with Δt, only inhibited by the gradient of the distribution in velocity space. Both single step drive and multistep chirp processes are shown to lead to steady state giant PSV, with multiple extrema due to embedded holes and clumps, long after the external drive is turned off.