Collisionless coupling of ion and electron temperatures in counterstreaming plasma flows.

Abstract

Rapid electron and ion heating is observed in collisionless counterstreaming plasma flows and explained via a novel heating mechanism that couples the electron and ion temperatures. Recent experiments measure plasma conditions 4 mm from the surface of single foil (single plasma stream) and double foils (two counterstreaming plasmas) targets using Thomson scattering. Significant increases in electron and ion temperatures (from <100 eV to >1 keV) compared to the single foil geometry are observed. While electrons are heated by friction on opposite going ions, ion-ion collisions cannot explain the observed ion heating. Also, density and flow velocity measurements show negligible slow down and rule out stagnation. The nonlinear saturation of an acoustic two-stream electrostatic instability is predicted to couple the ion temperature to the electron temperature through the dynamic evolution of the instability threshold. Particle-in-cell simulations including both collisional and collisionless effects are compared to the experimental measurements and show rapid electron and ion heating consistent with the experimental measurements.