Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: It is shown how evaporative cooling in hot plasma is essentially different from evaporative cooling in other media, such as neutral gases or Bose-Einstein condensates. The fundamental difference in plasmas arises both from the large mass ratio between electrons and ions in fully ionized plasma and the unusually sensitive dependence of plasma collisionality on speed. Thus, a hot ion mode plasma ($T_e < T_i$) is shown to support a distinctive evaporative cooling regime, where a strong reduction in the ion evaporation rate appears. This new regime may have application to approaches to economical nuclear fusion, where the ion tail plays an outsized role in the fusion reaction rate.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Institutions: Princeton University, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7213432658