Central Drift Research Articles

Estimating Inner Magnetospheric Radial Diffusion Using a Hybrid-Vlasov Simulation

Radial diffusion coefficients quantify non-adiabatic transport of energetic particles by electromagnetic field fluctuations in planetary radiation belts. Theoretically, radial diffusion occurs for an ensemble of particles that experience irreversible violation of their third adiabatic invariant, which is equivalent to a change in their Roederer L* parameter. Thus, the Roederer L* coordinate is the fundamental quantity from which radial diffusion coefficients can be computed. In this study, we present a methodology to calculate the Lagrangian derivative of L* from global magnetospheric simulations, and test it with an application to Vlasiator, a hybrid-Vlasov model of near-Earth space. We use a Hamiltonian formalism for particles confined to closed drift shells with conserved first and second adiabatic invariants to compute changes in the guiding center drift paths due to electric and magnetic field fluctuations. We investigate the feasibility of this methodology by computing the time derivative of L* for an equatorial ultrarelativistic electron population travelling along four guiding center drift paths in the outer radiation belt during a 5 minute portion of a Vlasiator simulation. Radial diffusion in this simulation is primarily driven by ultralow frequency waves in the Pc3 range (10–45 s period range) that are generated in the foreshock and transmitted through the magnetopause to the outer radiation belt environment. Our results show that an alternative methodology to compute detailed radial diffusion transport is now available and could form the basis for comparison studies between numerical and observational measurements of radial transport in the Earth’s radiation belts.

A Refinement of the Processes Controlling Dissolved Copper and Nickel Biogeochemistry: Insights From the Pan‐Arctic

AbstractRecent studies, including many from the GEOTRACES program, have expanded our knowledge of trace metals in the Arctic Ocean, an isolated ocean dominated by continental shelf and riverine inputs. Here, we report a unique, pan‐Arctic linear relationship between dissolved copper (Cu) and nickel (Ni) present north of 60°N that is absent in other oceans. The correlation is driven primarily by high Cu and Ni concentrations in the low salinity, river‐influenced surface Arctic and low, homogeneous concentrations in Arctic deep waters, opposing their typical global distributions. Rivers are a major source of both metals, which is most evident within the central Arctic's Transpolar Drift. Local decoupling of the linear Cu‐Ni relationship along the Chukchi Shelf and within the Canada Basin upper halocline reveals that Ni is additionally modified by biological cycling and shelf sediment processes, while Cu is mostly sourced from riverine inputs and influenced by mixing. This observation highlights differences in their chemistries: Cu is more prone to complexation with organic ligands, stabilizing its riverine source fluxes into the Arctic, while Ni is more labile and is dominated by biological processes. Within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, an important source of Arctic water to the Atlantic Ocean, contributions of Cu and Ni from meteoric waters and the halocline are attenuated during transit to the Atlantic. Additionally, Cu and Ni in deep waters diminish with age due to isolation from surface sources, with higher concentrations in the younger Eastern Arctic basins and lower concentrations in the older Western Arctic basins.

AI for Experimental Controls at Jefferson Lab

The AI for Experimental Controls project is developing an AI system to control and calibrate detector systems located at Jefferson Laboratory. Currently, calibrations are performed offline and require significant time and attention from experts. This work would reduce the amount of data and the amount of time spent calibrating in an offline setting. The first use case involves the Central Drift Chamber (CDC) located inside the GlueX spectrometer in Hall D. We use a combination of environmental and experimental data, such as atmospheric pressure, gas temperature, and the flux of incident particles as inputs to a sequential Neural Network (NN) to recommend a high voltage setting and the corresponding calibration constants in order to maintain consistent gain and optimal resolution throughout the experiment. Utilizing AI in this manner represents an initial shift from offline calibration towards near real time calibrations performed at Jefferson Laboratory.

Fabrication of a prototype of the Belle-II central drift chamber for development of the level-1 trigger system

Fabrication of a prototype of the Belle-II central drift chamber for development of the level-1 trigger system

Hinge-type FBG acceleration sensor based on double elastic plate

It is critical for the health monitoring of large-scale structures such as bridge, railway and tunnel to acquire the medium-frequency and high-frequency vibration signals. To solve the problems of low sensitivity and poor transverse anti-interference of the medium-frequency and high-frequency fiber acceleration sensor, a hinge-type Fiber Bragg Grating(FBG) acceleration sensor based on double elastic plate has been proposed, and the hinge and elastic plate are used as elastomer to realize the miniaturization and transverse interference suppression of the sensor. The MATLAB and the ANSYS are used for theoretical analysis and optimization of sensor sensitivity and resonance frequency, structural static stress analysis and modal simulation analysis, while the test system is built to test the sensor performance. The results show that the resonance frequency of the sensor is 1300 Hz; the sensor has a flat sensitivity response in the middle-high frequency band of 200–800 Hz; the sensitivity is about 20 pm/g, and the fiber central wavelength drift and acceleration have good linearity and stability, while the transverse anti-interference is about 3.16%, which provides a new idea for monitoring of medium-frequency and high-frequency vibration signals in large-scale structures.

Drift orbit islands of energetic particles due to 3D fields in ITER

In this paper, we report a comparative study of the orbit islands formed by the guiding center drift motion of test energetic particles (EPs), including both high-energy deuterium ions and fusion-born α-particles, with respect to the magnetic islands formed by tracing the field lines, for an ITER plasma representing the 15 MA baseline scenario. The particle drift orbit is modified by the presence of static resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) of different toroidal mode numbers n (n = 1 and 3 in this study), forming orbit islands in the Poincaré plane by passing EPs. The key findings are as follows. (i) With an n = 1 RMP field, the size of the orbit islands combined with the total RMP field, including the plasma response, is about three times smaller than that obtained by assuming the corresponding vacuum field. (ii) The orbit island size is not sensitive to the EP energy, and is comparable to those of the magnetic islands. (iii) Passing EPs with outward radial orbital drift form orbit islands that shift inward with respect to the corresponding magnetic islands, and vice versa. This radial shift, ΔΨ, measured in the normalized equilibrium poloidal flux, is quantified as ΔΨ ≃ 0.03X for the ITER baseline plasma and assuming n = 1 RMPs, with , where M is the particle mass, M p is the proton mass, E is the particle energy, and Z is the particle charge number. (iv) Trapped EPs do not form drift orbit islands, even in the presence of the 3D fields produced by the 90 kAt ELM control coil current in ITER, and thus possess good confinement properties. Nevertheless, the deformation of the trapped particle drift orbits in the Poincaré plane shows that the canonical toroidal angular momentum of EPs is no longer conserved in the presence of the RMP fields.

Gyrokinetic and extended-MHD simulations of a flow shear stabilized Z-pinch experiment

Axisymmetric (m = 0) gyrokinetic and extended-MHD simulations of a sheared-flow Z-pinch plasma are performed with the high-order finite volume code COGENT. The present gyrokinetic model solves the long-wavelength limit of the gyrokinetic equation for both ion and electron species coupled to the electrostatic gyro-Poisson equation for the electrostatic potential. The extended-MHD model is electromagnetic and includes the effects of the gyro-viscous pressure tensor, diamagnetic electron and ion heat fluxes, and generalized Ohm's law. A prominent feature of this work is that the radial profiles for the plasma density and temperature are taken from the fusion Z-pinch experiment (FuZE), and the magnetic field profile is obtained as a solution of the MHD force balance equation. Such an approach allows to address realistic plasma parameters and provide insights into the current and planned experiments. In particular, it is demonstrated that the radial profiles play an important role in stabilization, as the embedded guiding center (E×B) drift has a strong radial shear, which can contribute to the Z-pinch stabilization even in the absence of the fluid flow shear. The results of simulations for the FuZE plasma parameters show a decrease in the linear growth rate with an increase in the flow shear; however, full stabilization in the linear regime is not observed even for large (comparable to the Alfvén velocity) radial variations of the axial flow. Nonlinear stability properties of the FuZE plasmas are also studied, and it is found that profile broadening can have a pronounced stabilizing effect in the nonlinear regime.

Development of track segment finder for central drift chamber based level-1 trigger system in the Belle II experiment

The Belle II experiment is constructed at the KEK High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Japan. Due to the high luminosity of the beam, a trigger that effectively rejects beam-induced background is required. For this purpose, a level-1 trigger board with field-programmable gate arrays and high speed optical transceivers is developed for the central drift chamber trigger readout. Utilizing this hardware, we develop our algorithms, which find segments of charged particle trajectories using information of the central drift chamber.

Guiding center and gyrokinetic orbit theory for large electric field gradients and strong shear flows

The guiding center and gyrokinetic theory of magnetized particle motion is extended to the regime of large electric field gradients perpendicular to the magnetic field. A gradient in the electric field directly modifies the oscillation frequency and causes the Larmor orbits to deform from circular to elliptical trajectories. In order to retain a good adiabatic invariant, there can only be strong dependence on a single coordinate at lowest order, so that resonances do not generate chaotic motion that destroys the invariant. When the gradient across magnetic flux surfaces is dominant, the guiding center drift velocity becomes anisotropic in response to external forces and additional curvature drifts must be included. The electric polarization density remains gyrotropic, but both the polarization and magnetization are modified by the change in gyrofrequency. The theory can be applied to shear flows that are even stronger than those observed in the edge transport barrier of a high-performance tokamak (H-mode) pedestal, even if the toroidal field is as small as or even smaller than the poloidal field. Yet, the theory retains a mathematical form that is similar to the standard case and can readily be implemented within existing simulation tools.

Simultaneous Global and Local Alignment of the Belle II Tracking Detectors

The alignment of the Belle II tracking system, composed of a pixel and strip vertex detectors and central drift chamber, is described by approximately sixty thousand parameters; from local alignment of sensors and wires to relative global alignment of the sub-detectors. In the next data reprocessing, scheduled since Spring 2021, we aim to determine all parameters in a simultaneous fit by Millepede II, where recent developments allow to achieve a direct solution of the full problem in about one hour and make it practically feasible for regular detector alignment. The tracking detectors and the alignment technique are described and the alignment strategy is discussed in the context of studies on simulations and experience obtained from recorded data. Preliminary results and further refinements based on studies of real Belle II data are presented.

Pulse-onset dynamics in a bidirectional mode-locked fibre laser via instabilities

Real-time observation of the emergence of coherent structures from noise via instabilities is of particular interest across disciplines ranging from biology to astrophysics. In the context of photonics, ultrafast fibre lasers provide an ideal test-bed for experimental observation of dynamical instabilities and generation of coherent structures of ultrashort pulses. Here we present experimentally obtained switch-on dynamics of counter-propagating ultrashort pulses in a bidirectional mode-locked fibre laser with delayed pulse formation via Q-switched and modulation instabilities, pronounced central wavelength drift, with the multiple-pulse formation. We define a localisation parameter using the round-trip resolved autocorrelation function to quantify the extent of the pulse formation, indicating an energy interchange between coherent features and background radiation. Furthermore, we report the formation of synchronised and unsynchronised dispersion waves. Our results reveal the complexity of the establishment of coherent features and their interaction with background radiation, contributing further towards the understanding of nonlinear systems in general.

The GlueX beamline and detector

The GlueX experiment at Jefferson Lab has been designed to study photoproduction reactions with a 9-GeV linearly polarized photon beam. The energy and arrival time of beam photons are tagged using a scintillator hodoscope and a scintillating fiber array. The photon flux is determined using a pair spectrometer, while the linear polarization of the photon beam is determined using a polarimeter based on triplet photoproduction. Charged-particle tracks from interactions in the central target are analyzed in a solenoidal field using a central straw-tube drift chamber and six packages of planar chambers with cathode strips and drift wires. Electromagnetic showers are reconstructed in a cylindrical scintillating fiber calorimeter inside the magnet and a lead-glass array downstream. Charged particle identification is achieved by measuring energy loss in the wire chambers and using the flight time of particles between the target and detectors outside the magnet. The signals from all detectors are recorded with flash ADCs and/or pipeline TDCs into memories allowing trigger decisions with a latency of 3.3 μs. The detector operates routinely at trigger rates of 40 kHz and data rates of 600 megabytes per second. We describe the photon beam, the GlueX detector components, electronics, data-acquisition and monitoring systems, and the performance of the experiment during the first three years of operation.

Universal Scaling of Thin Current Sheets

AbstractThin current sheets (TCSs) with thicknesses about ion Larmor radii are widespread in space. It is important to describe their equilibrium structure allowing them to store and then explosively release the accumulated free energy. When ions are moving along quasi‐adiabatic trajectories while magnetized electrons follow guiding center drift orbits, TCSs can be described within the framework of a hybrid approach. The thickness of the embedded electron sheet remains uncertain because of the scale‐free character of electron motion. In this work, we propose a novel analytical model of the multilayer TCS that provides a universal expression describing the inner (embedded) electron sheet in dependence of TCS characteristics. An unusual property of the embedded electron layer revealed in this analysis is the nonlinear profile of the magnetic field in the inner layer: B(z) ~ z1/3, which conforms excellently with MAVEN observations of 43 TCSs in the Martian magnetotail.

General relativistic hydrodynamics on a moving-mesh I: static space–times

ABSTRACT We present the moving-mesh general relativistic hydrodynamics solver for static space–times as implemented in the code, MANGA. Our implementation builds on the architectures of MANGA and the numerical relativity python package NRPy+. We review the general algorithm to solve these equations and, in particular, detail the time-stepping; Riemann solution across moving faces; conversion between primitive and conservative variables; validation and correction of hydrodynamic variables; and mapping of the metric to a Voronoi moving-mesh grid. We present test results for the numerical integration of an unmagnetized Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff star for 24 dynamical times. We demonstrate that at a resolution of 106 mesh generating points, the star is stable and its central density drifts downwards by 2 per cent over this time-scale. At a lower resolution, the central density drift increases in a manner consistent with the adopted second-order spatial reconstruction scheme. These results agree well with the exact solutions, and we find the error behaviour to be similar to Eulerian codes with second-order spatial reconstruction. We also demonstrate that the new code recovers the fundamental mode frequency for the same TOV star but with its initial pressure depleted by 10 per cent.

Development of the Level-1 track trigger with Central Drift Chamber detector in Belle II experiment and its performance in SuperKEKB 2019 Phase 3 operation

The Level-1 trigger system (TRG) in the Belle II experiment is designed to summarize real-time sub-detectors information by using FPGA chips for the central data acquisition (DAQ) system, and it includes several sub-trigger systems for triggering various types of physics events in interest. The main focus in this report is CDCTRG: the track trigger system with Central Drift Chamber (CDC) detector, which is responsible for the real-time trajectory reconstruction of charged particles with various algorithms: Track-Segment Finder, 2D, 3D, Neuro-3D, and short tracking. CDCTRG is necessary for specific types of physics, such as hadronic and μ pair. This paper will introduce the design of the hardware system and algorithm implementation in FPGAs. Development, validation and performance of each CDCTRG module during SuperKEKB beam collision operation will also be discussed in detail.

Symplectic Computations of Fast Ion Trajectory and Radial Diffusion Coefficient in MHD Perturbed Tokamak

The magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD) modes existing in conducting plasmas can greatly affect charged particle’s dynamics. Low frequency MHD perturbations, called the neo-classical tearing (NTM) modes, give rise to magnetic islands which can deteriorate fast ion confinement, especially in tokamak plasmas. Here, a Hamiltonian guiding-center code, based on symplectic algorithm which allows efficient computations of energetic ion trajectories and transport coefficients, has been applied to magnetically perturbed tokamak plasmas. The effects of NTM perturbations on the energetic ion trajectories and diffusion coefficient have been presented. It is demonstrated that the inclusion of such steady state magnetic perturbations in the guiding center drift orbit computations escalates the loss of energetic ions via radial diffusion. Moreover, the broader NTMs lead to a significant enhancement of the radial diffusion coefficient.

Method for identification, stability analysis and the dynamics monitoring of sociotechnical clusters

The problem arising in the study of sociotechnical clusters is revealed. This problem consists in the impossibility of using a standard approach for the identification and sociotechnical clusters analysis, which does not take into account the relationship of coordinated interaction between objects in such clusters, depending on their goals and objectives. The set of indicators for the identification and analysis of sociotechnical clusters is substantiated. These indicators are based on fuzzy relations of concerted interaction between objects in such clusters. The original method for identification, stability analysis and the dynamics monitoring of sociotechnical clusters is proposed. The proposed method, in contrast to the known ones, allows you to analyze: the changing of the sociotechnical clusters sizes; the sociotechnical cluster centre drift; the separation and merging of these clusters; the emergence and disappearance of sociotechnical clusters. Fuzzy cognitive approach is used for the first time: firstly, to justify and estimate a set of indicators for sociotechnical clusters; secondly, for the stability analysis of these sociotechnical clusters.

A 3D track finder for the Belle II CDC L1 trigger

Machine learning methods are integrated into the pipelined first level (L1) track trigger of the upgraded flavor physics experiment Belle II at KEK in Tsukuba, Japan. The novel triggering techniques cope with the severe background from events outside the small collision region provided by the new SuperKEKB asymmetric-energy electron-positron collider. Using the precise drift-time information of the central drift chamber which provides axial and stereo wire layers, a neural network L1 trigger estimates the 3D track parameters of tracks, based on input from the axial wire planes provided by a 2D track finder. An extension of this 2D Hough track finder to a 3D finder is proposed, where the single hit representations in the Hough plane are trained using Monte Carlo. This 3D finder improves the track finding efficiency by including the stereo sense wires as input. The estimated polar track angle allows a specialization of the subsequent neural networks to sectors in the polar angle.

The Central Drift Chamber for GlueX

The Central Drift Chamber is a straw-tube wire chamber of cylindrical structure located surrounding the target inside the bore of the GlueX spectrometer solenoid. Its purpose is to detect and track charged particles with momenta as low as 0.25GeV/c and to identify low-momentum protons via energy loss. The construction of the detector is described and its operation and calibration are discussed in detail. The design goal of 150μm in position resolution has been reached.

Room-Temperature Power-Stabilized Narrow-Linewidth Tunable Erbium-Doped Fiber Ring Laser Based on Cascaded Mach-Zehnder Interferometers With Different Free Spectral Range for Strain Sensing

An automatically power-stabilized (with power fluctuation <0.155 dB), narrow-linewidth (0.0171 nm), wavelength-tunable (10.69 nm) erbium-doped fiber laser has been proposed by cascading two fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometers (MZI) without using any temperature controlling device. One of the MZIs (here called the 1st MZI) is composed of two 3 dB couplers to form interference patterns while the other MZI (here termed the 2nd MZI) is constructed with a tapered seven-core fiber (SCF) and based on the principle of supermode interference. For the two MZIs, the free spectral range (FSR), the passband bandwidth and the extinction ratio (ER) at 1560 nm are 0.37 nm, 0.19 nm, 16.6 dB and 13.93 nm, 7.93 nm, 10.1 dB, respectively. Due to the major difference between the two FSR values, the 1st MZI and the 2nd MZI respectively play a role in controlling the laser linewidth and suppressing the homogeneous broadening effect to reach to a satisfactory level of power stability. The 2nd MZI is also used to fine tune the laser wavelength by applying strain to the tapered SCF (TSCF) over the spectral range of 1570.22–1559.33 nm, with an incremental step of 0.37 nm being used. The side-mode suppression ratio (SMSR) of the tunable fiber laser can be up to 45 dB. By appropriately adjusting the polarization controller, dual wavelength lasing can also be achieved. For single wavelength lasing, the 3 dB laser linewidth is 0.0171 nm. The power fluctuation, without a temperature controlling device being used and operating at room temperature, is found to be less than 0.155 dB over 1 hour while the central wavelength drift is less than 0.19 nm.