Path-integrated electrostatic energization in laser-driven collisionless cylindrical convergence
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Collisionless converging ion flows can sustain particle energization over an extended path, but the field channel responsible for the energy gain is not always identifiable. In laser-driven bladed microtube implosion, energetic carbon ions were previously observed alongside a self-generated gigagauss-class axial magnetic field [D. Pan and M. Murakami, ], leaving the origin of their energization unresolved. Using two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, field-particle power decomposition and trajectory-resolved work accounting show that radial electrostatic work accumulated along the converging path supplies more than 98 % of the net in-plane electric work, whereas the azimuthal channel associated with the time-varying magnetic field remains subdominant. The peak local mean ion energy factorizes, to good approximation, into an incident-flow contribution controlled by laser intensity and a geometric enhancement that grows approximately linearly with the inner radius because ions accumulate electrostatic work over a longer convergence path. The path-averaged radial electric field 〈 E r 〉 scales with the peak laser intensity I L as 〈 E r 〉 ∝ I L 0.47 , favoring a geometry-pinned, comoving charge-separation structure over Debye-limited scaling. The peak local mean carbon-ion energy reaches 0.89 GeV. A smooth-cylinder control exhibits comparable peak energization, showing that blade modulation mainly affects poststagnation ion residence rather than the energy source.
Source: Physical review. E
DOI: 10.1103/8jqr-lcb3
Authors: D. Pan, M. Murakami, S. Fujioka, H. Nagatomo
Institution: The University of Osaka
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7214712486